Sunny Wolverhampton

About to head to the Midlands to spend the day with our new training manager, the reason for trekking up to the Midlands is that it gives me the chance to see both the coffee and the sandwich trial. So far the feedback has been positive from both colleagues and customers although we will be measuring the impact of the trials from a sales and profit perspective and these measure along with the anecdotal feedback will give us an indication as to the success of the trial.
There is quite a lot riding on this these products are the first we have launched where the focus has been on tasty, fresh and traditional which is where we are looking to pitch ourselves. Due to the fact that the sandwiches are made in store we have made a saving of the cost price which is being passed onto the customer as we do want to retain our value for money positioning.
We now have to figure out how to train these new products into the rest of the chain!
Continuing on the food theme we have had a series of sample days for the next product launch which is still scheduled for the 6th May. The team have come up with some great ideas which include a new, hot breakfast product and a couple of fantastic traditional lunch time products.
We have also signed off I the designs for the marketing collateral which also goes into stores on the 6th and which will give us a real step change in the look and feel of our outlets, gone is the bold white font on a black background and in comes three separate looks to reflect the way in which we are segmenting our offer, they are fresh, contemporary but still quite traditional. This will hopefully begin to send out a strong message that things are changing at BHS…..the challenge will be to ensure that people’s perception is that they are changing for the better.