According to Kantar, data for the 52 weeks to 18 April 2021, Brits are already crazy about biscuits, buying them 10% more often than chocolate, confectionery and chips.
“Biscuits is an important category in convenience with the largest penetration across all snacking categories and bought by 99% of households,” said Claire Parker, Nisa Retail’s marketing manager for category growth wholesale.”
However, both pladis and Nisa believe there are still opportunities to boost the category even further.
The biscuit manufacturer is trialling its Better Biscuit initiative for eight weeks across eight stores of the £1.45bn family of independent retailers – which was acquired by Co-op in 2018 and today, operates almost 3,500 stores across the US – designed to maximise the biscuit fixture through range optimisation and merchandising recommendations.
Tips and tricks
pladis’ Charlotte Prain added, “After a tough year, the 5 Steps to Better Biscuits will help retailers to get back to basics, with range recommendations for the best-selling biscuits, optimised planogram layouts by fixture size and location, and tips and tricks to help drive category sales.”
Planograms are essentially schematic diagrams of the entire store that indicates the placement of products on shelves. Used by retailers of all sizes, the purpose is to help keep stores efficient and to maximise their selling space. It also helps creates consistency in the store, improve visual appeal and promote product pairing suggestions, along with helping to determine how much inventory is needed for each product line.
Results from pladis’ two month trail will be carefully analysed and feedback given to store managers and other Nisa partners to help bump up biscuit sales.
“The team at pladis is incredibly knowledgeable and a joy to work with,” said Parker.
“They have taken time to really understand our business and worked closely with us to ensure that our Co-op branded offering is correctly represented within the category and that any local lines that are important to an individual store are included in the planograms.”