Convenience
Convenience: thousands of small doors, one shared route
Convenience stores sell in ones and twos, order in handfuls and hold shelves barely a metre wide. No single brand can afford to call on them. We already do — every week, with a full basket, so your line rides a route that is already paid for.
The maths of a single-brand call
A convenience store holds what it can sell in a few days. It orders two cases, sometimes one. Send your own van to that door and the fuel, the driver's hour, the paperwork and the return trip all sit on top of two cases of product. Repeat that across thousands of small shops on back streets, forecourts and transport hubs and the route costs more than the margin it earns. That is why most brands stop at the big chains and leave the small-format trade to chance.
A shared route makes it viable
Our van does not call on that shop for your brand. It calls with a full basket — ambient grocery, household lines, confectionery, health and personal care, oral care — built from every brand we carry. The cost of the drop is divided across the whole order, so a two-case line pays its way. You get the same door, the same frequency and the same driver as brands many times your size, because none of you is funding the journey alone.
Built for a one-facing shelf
Small-format space is measured in facings, not metres. We tell you which of your packs can earn one: the single-serve or small count rather than the family size, the price point a shopper decides on at the till, and an outer case a shop with no stockroom can actually take in. Where the channel expects a price-marked pack, we say so before you print. Lines that cannot hold a facing come off the route rather than sitting in a back room going out of date.
Convenience
Small-format trade is not one customer. Symbol groups and buying groups list centrally, then each store orders for itself. Forecourt operators buy to a range set at head office. Independents and neighbourhood shops decide at the counter, or collect from a depot when it suits them. We hold the central listings and we call on the stores, so a decision taken at head office turns into stock on the shelf — and the shopkeeper nobody ever contacted is still offered the line.
We own the stock and the risk
We buy your product outright and carry it on our books. That means we also carry the credit risk across thousands of small accounts, chase the payments and absorb the slow payers. You invoice us, once, against the order we place. Date control sits with us too: we rotate what is on the shelf, pull short-dated stock off the route and settle returns with the store. The awkward parts of selling in small quantities stay our problem, not yours.
In practice.
Shared drop cost
The call is funded by a full mixed basket, not by your two cases. Small volumes reach the door at the same cost per drop as large ones.
Cases broken down
We split full outers into what a small shop can sell before it dates, and consolidate the remainder across the rest of the route.
Weekly call cycle
Fixed routes, fixed days. Our people are in these stores every week to take the order, check the facing and put the stock out.
FAQ
Questions brands ask us.
Yes. A short range is only uneconomic when it has to fund its own route. On ours it travels with everything else on the van, so the cost per door is the same for two lines as for two hundred. What matters is whether each line can hold a facing and turn over in a few days. If it can, it belongs on the route.
Nothing. We buy your stock, hold it in our own warehouses and sell it on. There is no listing fee, no storage charge and no delivery cost. We earn from the margin between what we pay you and what we sell at, so we only make money once the product leaves the shelf. Your side of it is production and supply.
Sometimes the outer case does. A shop with no stockroom cannot take a twenty-four count of a large format, and a case that will not fit under the counter gets refused. We will tell you what the shelf takes before you commit to a print run — pack size, outer count, whether the channel expects a price-marked pack — and you decide. Nothing is mandatory.
Next door.
Send us your range.
We will tell you honestly where it fits and how fast we can start.