Retailers/Booker/News

Booker news

30 March 2017
Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler, Booker has announced its trading headlines for the 12 weeks to 24 March, with total sales up just 0.5%, slower than Q3 when growth was +2.9%.  However, the key drag on performance was a significant steepening decline in tobacco sales, where the onset of new plain-packaging and pack size regulations, saw the category sink by -7.9%.  In contrast growth in non...
09 March 2017
More than 800 jobs have been lost after Food Retailer Operations Limited, the owner of 34 Budgens stores, collapsed into administration. Hilco Capital, appoints PwC as administrator Food Retailer Operations Limited bought the stores from the Co-operative Group in July and said at the time "there are no planned redundancies" and stores will continue "trading as usual". But last month, Food...
12 January 2017
Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler has reported Q3 sales up by 2.9% for the 16 weeks to 30 December.  This is the first quarter reported since the annualisation of the acquisition of the Budgens and Londis operation in September, and shows solid performance across all divisions of the business.  However, sales of tobacco continue to underperform, down 1.3%.  2017 is also likely to a difficult...
01 December 2016
Budgens is trialling a new mobile app which enables customers to build shopping lists, create navigation guides, scan barcodes and checkout using their smartphones at the point of sale (PoS). Enhancing convenience across the in-store journey The Ubamarket app aims to improve the shopping experience. It rearranges users' shopping lists upon entry to the store to reflect layout and creat...
16 November 2016
Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler Booker is to launch a joint-venture partnership with India's largest retailer, Future Consumer Ltd (the FMCG arm of the Future Group conglomerate), to drive the expansion of cash & carry wholesale formats in the Indian market.  The equal partnership between the two businesses will target the opening of 60-70 cash & carry depots in the next three years, build...
13 October 2016
Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler Booker has reported first half sales of £2.5bn (to 9 September), up 13%; and still benefiting from the first year impact of its acquisition of the Budgens/Londis symbol group operation.  However, like-for-like sales in its core business are still being impacted by a weak tobacco category, where sales were down by 5.6% on the year, though non-tobacco sal...
15 September 2016
Leading UK wholesaler Booker has reported its sales performance numbers for the 12 weeks to 9 September 2016, showing total sales up 15.2%, boosted by the continuing first year impact of the acquisition of the Londis and Budgens distribution business; which added 14.5% growth to tobacco sales and 15.5% to non-tobacco sales. Like-for-likes improving After several quarters of negative like...
23 August 2016
Two years on from reaching the milestone of 3,000 member stores, Booker's Premier group has shown its ability to keep growing announcing that the 3,300th member store has just been opened at Barton in Cheshire.  While top line growth is offset by some level of 'churn', as some members leave, the group has successfully achieved net store growth around 5% in the last two years, with 330 members rec...
15 August 2016
In the second of a two-part series, we showcase some of the most inspirational stores we have seen around the world this year. Canada: Whole Foods Market, North Burnaby, BC Selected by Stewart Samuel, Program Director IGD Canada A visually stunning store, this creates a benchmark for retailers seeking to create a compelling in-store experience. Whole Foods Market has done a great job i...
06 July 2016
Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler Booker has announced performance figures for Q1 2016/17, showing total sales boosted by 10%, benefiting from the first year impacts of the acquisition of the Budgens/Londis symbol groups, now trading as Booker Retail partners.  However, on a like-for-like basis (including the core Booker and Makro cash & carry businesses, sales were down 2.9%, representing t...