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MJ’s Premier Store, situated in Housing Estate, UK, owner Justin Whittaker honored with Food to go Retailer Award in the Asian Trader Awards 2019. Justin Whittaker says “We identified that whilst our food-to-go offer was great for breakfast and dinner – from 4pm we were quiet. Yet takeaways are thriving in the evening. We were missing a trick. We also identified that we were missing ‘millennials’ from our customer base. So we introduced the desserts bar to complement the rest of our food-to-go offering by giving an offer for the evening trade and something that would appeal to the younger generation – waffles, crepes and premium ice cream! The desserts bar alone takes £4,000 a week with a profit margin of +50{61307dbfb632870ba326f6322853bd3ffea5b163e9c789324eea2723926c15c1}. We’ve introduced exclusive offers, such as Waffle Wednesday (buy one get one free) or Monday 2 pizzas and Pepsi for £10. And we’ve developed an ordering app to maximise the appeal of the dessert bar, appeal to our younger more ‘tech-savvy’ younger generation and to future proof our business. Customers can click onto a Facebook post to ‘shop now’. We’re doing £1,500 business with the app and more importantly, it’s all on high profit lines. Add to that our food-to-go zone with coffee machine, doughnut rack, hot cabinet, noodle snacks, grab and go chiller, which includes sandwiches and meal deals. There’s something for everyone throughout the day. Evenings are now our busiest time of day for food to go! We already had a good broad food-to-go offering to cover most requirements for grab-and-go. Our food-to-go zone includes a coffee machine, doughnut rack, hot cabinet, noodle snacks, F’real milkshakes and a chiller (with sandwiches, crisps and soft drinks). Now that we’ve introduced the desserts bar we’ve got an offer that is really popular with the younger generation and also for evening trade. That’s what was missing before. The investment in the desserts bar was £80k. Payback was just 6 months.” He says about the best-performing component of food-to-go. “This year, we’ve built a dessert bar! This has definitely proved to be the best performing component of our food to go offer. It cost £80k to install and payback has been just 6 months. Previously a large proportion of our business was driven through promotions, so our POR was just 19{61307dbfb632870ba326f6322853bd3ffea5b163e9c789324eea2723926c15c1}. We reduced SKUs across the store to create space to build our ‘Just Desserts Co’ bar. It’s a vibrant pink – really distinct and completely different from the...