Description
The Food and Beverage Industry everywhere is in the throes of profound changes. Consumers today have evolved tastes and preferences, and this means that they want no trade-offs when it comes to the cost, quality and variety of products they buy.
Likewise, markets too also evolving with the emergence of new distribution channels, which have to be kept adequately supplied by manufacturers and retailers. They also face significant demands for ramping up their capability and adoption of new products which, in turn, leads to shorter production runs and inventory turnarounds, frequent changeovers, and greater focus on asset utilization. Turn to our story F&B Retail: Challenges and Strategies for Building Operational Excellence and Agility (pages 52-56) for an insightful lowdown on the new challenges and opportunities before manufacturers and retailers.
The one approach that retailers and manufacturers can take to overcome these challenges is to create a ‘Learning Organization’ that is agile at delivering the information flow in the network. The key is to focus on activities that equip a producer or retailer to adapt as external forces change. Our Cover Story of the month (pages 26-41) features Daymart – north Kerala’s largest retailer, which aims to become the State’s best and biggest. Kerala probably has the highest density of modern trade outlets with even small and thinly populated villages supporting multiple supermarkets.
However, as the story reveals, quite a few of them are going off the deep end. While there’s not a magic elixir that stressed retailers can take to cure the hemophilia, business is looking peachy for Daymart, which has chalked out an ambitious road map to grow its footprint to 50 stores from 20 currently, and cross Rs. 500 crore in revenue by 2030.
