Day one of the 2023 C&I Symposium offered attendees a morning filled with insights and data, future trends, and innovations relating to the P&C industry.
Held at the ICC Sydney, the morning opened with Safa de Valois, Group Publisher of C&I Media, and Matt Dodson, General Manager of OOH at Patties Foods, welcoming the sold-out crowd to a morning of knowledge-building.
Theo Foukkare, CEO of the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS), then took the stage to review the recent AACS International Study Tour and share the latest trends and developments in European convenience.
“There’s a lot of change happening that will continue to happen. If you look at where we’ve come from and where we are today, our retailers are significantly different in the use of technology, the way they’ve used labor, and the way they merchandise the stores.
“When LPG went away, we all thought, ‘oh no, what’s going to happen to our industry?’, but we pivoted and continued to move forward, and I think that’s what we’re going to see,” said Foukkare.
Foukkare gave examples of retailers in Europe that have successfully grown from simply a convenience store into destination points through integrating new offers and evolving current offers.
Foukkare then participated in a panel discussion with Lou Jardin, Managing Director of SPAR Australia, Joanna Graham, Senior Manager of Convenience Trading ANZ at bp, and Michael Brick, Partner and Managing Director of Meris Food Equipment.
The panel discussed future-proofing convenience retail and the pain points facing store owners in the face of relentless evolution, as well as how retailers can adopt and implement new technologies most effectively.
Jardin then presented insights and learnings from his decades of experience working in the retail environment and how so much has changed, but at the same time, the fundamentals remain the same.
“The first SPAR conference I went to was in 1975, and a gentleman by the name of Robin Burnhill stood up and spoke. He talked about things that still resonate with me today, such as how do you present your store? How do you put your best foot forward? What do you have to do on a daily basis in terms of getting a consumer in?”
Jardin then spoke about SPAR in Europe, a leading example of how convenience stores are successfully adapting to changing consumer preferences, as well as the continued progress that SPAR Australia has made.
“I’ve been in this business a long time, and its probably the most exciting period that I’ve had to deal with. Certainly, the challenges ahead are very complex, and we have a lot of issues to deal with, but I’m really comfortable with where we’re going and what the direction is.”
Finally, keynote speaker Tushar Menon, Co-Founder and CEO of My Muscle Chef, shared the story of the brand’s evolution from a Potts Point kitchen to today’s $200 million per year healthy food empire.
“I started My Muscle Chef with my brother Nish in 2013, and it’s fair to say our brand has evolved quite a bit. At the very beginning, I created the brand for myself. I was looking for a solution for when I was going to the gym and was sick of cooking my chicken, broccoli, and brown rice every day, and I decided surely there’s a better way to do this.
“Here we are 10 years later, we’ve grown a lot, there’ve been a lot of pivots, but I’m very proud of the business we’ve created. We now employ over 600 staff, and this year we’ll generate over $200 million in revenue. To put things in perspective, on a monthly basis, we deliver over 2.2 million meals, snacks, and drinks across the country to our online customers. But we also have the retail part of the business, which has over 6000 stockists.”
Menon then shared 10 key lessons he’s learned in the 10 years of growing his business, from mistakes he’s made, lessons he’s learned, and advice he would give to anyone starting up a new business.
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