Ziheed and his brother Idris won the Best Soft Drinks prize at the Forecourt Trader of the Year Awards 2017. Ziheed says: "You would not believe how many soft drinks we sell. When we entered the awards last year it was 4-500 units a day but now it’s well over 600."
He puts the increase in sales down to his range, housed in 9m of chillers across the store’s back wall. "We’re very competitive on price," he adds, saying that they use a planogram and ensure they display the drinks properly. "It’s all about teamwork. We work closely with Coca-Cola. Their rep comes in regularly to ensure we have everything in stock and displayed correctly and we always do. Everything is correctly labelled, priced and presented; our team are very good at all that."
As for best sellers, it’s still Classic Coke for this store. Prices have gone up because of the Sugar Levy but have not made any difference to sales.
"With these types of changes, it always takes a few months for things to click with consumers. Some have noticed the price increase but they like the drink so are willing to pay for it," says Ziheed.
Ziheed and Idris stock price-marked packs but say they’re quite hard to get hold of at the moment because of all the price changes.
Ziheed says their secret weapon sales-wise at the moment is American soft drinks: "We stock around eight flavours of American Fanta and we sell 30 cases a week. Grape is most popular. These US flavours are more expensive than ours in the UK but shoppers love them. We also stock the US Dr Pepper flavours."
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