Convenience Retailers Honored in London

LONDON – U.K.-based retailer Thornton’s Budgens has won the 2019 NACS European Convenience Retail Sustainability Award, sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, and Ireland-based convenience retailer Applegreen has won the 2019 NACS European Convenience Retail Technology Award, sponsored by PDI.

Both awards were presented during the NACS Convenience Summit Europe awards dinner in London on June 6.

NACS European Convenience Retail Sustainability Award
Thornton’s Budgens has been recognized for its outstanding pursuit of a significant and compelling sustainability initiative that has significantly improved commercial performance, competitiveness, customer perception, staff engagement and prospects for continued financial strength.

Founded in 2006, Thornton’s Budgens, located in Belsize Park, North London, launched plastic-free zones inside the store in November 2018, after converting 1,825 product lines to non-plastic packaging within a 10-week time frame. During the process, the retailer worked with A Plastic Planet to source plastic-free suppliers. The move resulted in consumer and international attention, with the retailer acknowledging the shifting consumer mindset toward plastic and its impact on the environment, as well as growing social and corporate pressures to reduce plastic use.

Andrew Thornton, owner of Thornton’s Budgens, says that the plastic-free initiative shows other retailers that reducing plastic is not difficult to execute, can bring positive benefits to the business and serve as a competitive advantage.

For a decade the retailer has been an industry leader in sustainability initiatives. In June 2009, Thornton created an “Energy Team” within the store to implement a strategic energy plan and identify and eliminate wasted energy, particularly in refrigeration and lighting. As a result, the retailer began reducing its carbon footprint by replacing old equipment with energy-efficient cooler doors and installing LED lighting.

European Convenience Retail Technology Award
Founded in 1992, Applegreen began with its first service station in Ballyfermot, West Dublin, and has since grown to operate nearly 500 forecourt sites; the company employs more than 10,700 people in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Applegreen has implemented a sophisticated price optimization solution, an initiative led by Applegreen COO Joe Barrett, to boost Applegreen’s profitability at the pump. The solution helps eliminate site-level information silos and improve operational visibility across the business.

From the onset, the Applegreen team outlined success metrics for the project by clearly communicating established business processes, objectives and necessary integration touchpoints. As the project progressed, the team worked closely with PDI to appropriately configure and test the software, eventually culminating in a successful rollout across all Applegreen sites.

The software, which features mobile and web-based capabilities, enables real-time data collection from multiple sources, including market costs, competitor prices and historic site-level sales as well as time-of-day, holiday, seasonal and special event considerations. The sophisticated data model then employs user-defined pricing rules to predict price elasticity and make the best recommendation to achieve Applegreen’s goal of maximizing profitability, while maintaining its reputation as the most cost-efficient fuel option for consumers.

The software’s flexible reporting capabilities, integration with other internal systems (for example, ERP) and ability to centrally manage fuel pricing across Applegreen’s vast network of sites, make it an integral part of the retailer’s growing technology apparatus, powering operational visibility and enabling actionable decision making across its business. In fact, the solution has been significant to the retailer’s expansion, helping it grow from less than 100 sites to nearly 500 in multiple countries.

Today, Applegreen’s fuel pricing process is completely automated and connected, allowing the company to quickly and easily transform data into a competitive advantage that helps consumers save money on fuel costs.

Now in its 11th year, the awards dinner is a high point for retailers, industry experts and suppliers who gather each June at the NACS Convenience Summit Europe to recognize and celebrate industry success and innovation.

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