Cheryl Hunter (shelflife at marklives.com)’s weekly pick of all things new — product, packaging, design, insight, food, décor and more!
Helix brings back the cork
A Corner Bakery on every street
Meandering the midlands on mobile
An unexpected twist
Helix is a new packaging solution, pioneered globally by the world’s largest cork producer and distributor, Amorim Cork and O-I glass manufacturers, which combines modern convenience with the romanticism associated with uncorking wine.
Helix has already successfully been launched in numerous European markets, and this spring consumers will see the product on local shelves. too: Wine specialist company Vinimark is the first South African company to embrace the new closure and has bottled its Krone Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2015 under a foil-wrapped HELIX top.
According to Joaquim Sá, managing director of Amorim South Africa, the local wine industry has always benefited from ‘out-of-the-box’ marketing ideas: “The dynamic nature of the SA wine market has throughout history stimulated producers to deliver cutting-edge, innovative products — not only in terms of wines and styles, but also with regards to packaging and closures.
“Helix meets consumers’ growing desire for sustainability and quality, while delivering the brand building and premium image packaging wineries rely upon. We are offering the market not only a 100% renewable, modern product, but also a solution that enhances the wine drinking experience through opening and resealing convenience.”
The concept combines an ergonomically designed stopper made from cork and a glass bottle with an internal thread finish in the neck, creating a high performing and sophisticated wine-packaging solution. It has the benefits of both cork and glass — quality, sustainability and premium image with user-friendly, resealable convenience — and is the result of a four-year partnership between Amorim and O-I.
Antonio Amorim, Amorim president, says he’s excited that his company offers a solution melding modern functionality with the ancient tradition of enjoying wine bottled under cork: “There is a romantic connotation with wine, and it is important to preserve that association; this is important for the consumer and therefore essential for wineries competing for attention in a very competitive and cluttered market.”
According to Amorim, testing showed wine packaged in Helix glass bottles with cork stoppers has shown no alteration in terms of taste, aroma or colour. As part of the development process, market research in France, UK, USA and China revealed great consumer acceptance of Helix for fast turnaround and popular premium wines. In addition, consumers also appreciate retaining the festive ‘pop’ associated with opening a bottle of wine.
www.helixconcept.com • www.amorimcork.com • Twitter • Facebook
100percentcork.org • Twitter • Facebook
Cornering the retail pie
The Corner Bakery, located at Engen forecourts across SA, recently opened its 400th store, making it the fourth-biggest retail chain in terms of number of stores and one of the biggest local-business success stories. Shelf Life spoke to marketing manager, David Botha, about their achievements.
The Corner Bakery, purchased by Retsol in 2007 when it had no franchisees, today sells more than 1m pies each month, employs 230 people across its own business and has created over 2 000 jobs through its franchisees. The number of stores has grown exponentially: the majority of SA stores are along the West and East Coasts, with just over 60 inland. The first 250 stores were opened during the first two-to-three years of operation.
Corner Bakery has since ventured beyond SA borders and has 65 stores spread across Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Reunion and Mauritius. Next year, Retsol will add stores in DRC and Gabon, and expects to take the total store count across the entire African continent to close to 600.
In the beginning, pies were the staple product and accounted for 80–90% of business. Coffee through another Retsol subsidiary, the Equatorial Coffee brand. Says Botha, “In the convenience-food space, there is a strong correlation between buying food and beverages. To exploit this synergy, Corner Bakery has offered a number of combination coffee and food promotions.”
The two brands have been developed in collaboration with FCB Cape Town: “Historically, brand communications have been focused on sales-based tactics but, since the beginning of 2015, we have spread the focus to not only driving sales but also building long-term customer affinity through ensuring consistently great products and great service. The key to this is to better understand what our customers want from Corner Bakery.”
In total, Corner Bakery has more than 2000 menu items and each franchisee may select between 60 and 100. This enables the brand to be both flexible and “one-size-fits-all”. Since pies contribute to almost 50% of their sales mix, they are committed to retaining (and growing) this category dominance: “We know we have the best pies in SA and we want all of our customers to know that too. If you think pie — we want you to think Corner Bakery Pie.
“We are so committed to being the category leader that we have segmented the offer with a tiered product strategy. Pie Bites cover the snacking range; the Corner Bakery Pie the standard pie category range (although we do have the biggest foiled pie in South Africa) and the Big Shot Burger Pie — the new kid on the block with the biggest fill of any pie.”
External communication, says Botha, is the current focus as more people are needed to come into the stores: “Being inside the Quickshop environment is beneficial but being ‘hidden’ from passing traffic is a challenge for us at times.”
He admits that heading into Africa presents new challenges but also has many great opportunities: “We are currently rolling out several new stores with Engen but standalone stores are also part of our strategy. Being able to have [the latter] will enable us to quickly build the brand recognition we need to gain traction in Africa. Our first independent Corner Bakery store will be opening its doors in Zambia in early 2016.”
Corner Bakery’s turnover growth has averaged 20% year-on-year, and Botha is confident that the franchise will continue to register double-digit growth for the foreseeable future: “We are growing sales aggressively. So far, growth has been organic. Revenue has come through the existing market as well as product innovation.”
His secret to success? “In order of importance: strategy (informs everything), quality (not negotiable) and convenience (the future of anything retail) — all leveraged and sustained with a clear brand proposition.”
www.cornerbakeryonline.net
The Midlands Meander goes mobile
The famous tourist route based in the KZN Midlands countryside is celebrating its 30-year anniversary this month by embracing the changing face of tech with a new travel guide and mobile app.
The Midlands Meander App, available on Playstore on any Andriod phone, combines simplicity and new technology, offering visitors the option to use cellphones to navigate their tourism experiences. iPhones users will have to wait until December.
According to Midlands Meander manager, both will facilitate new tourism to the area: “It will transform the cellphone into a guide on the go — the information tourists want will be a button away.”
App users may look forward to:
Realtime navigation using Google Maps
A page for each of the over 150 Midlands Meander establishments with contact details, descriptions, opening times photos and links to help plan, and
Advanced search options.
“Traditionally visitors have paged through the picture-heavy Midlands Meander Guide. This guide has become a sought-after magazine that offers visitors to the area a smorgasbord of options on where to stay, eat, shop and what to do while visiting. Our theme changes every year and we add stories and snippets of information on the people and history of the area, which keeps enticing visitors back.”
This year the theme of the Midlands Meander guide is a look at the original founder members — a group of artists and crafters who were battling to access the commercial markets in the big cities, due to rising costs and the politically tumultuous times of the mid-80s when many gallery owners were leaving. They decided to create a tourism route where visitors to the area could see them creating work in their studios, and they could sell where they were based.
midlandsmeander.co.za • Twitter • Facebook
Shelf Life is MarkLives.com’s weekly column covering all things new. Notify us of yours at shelflife at marklives dot com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.
Cheryl Hunter (@cherylhunter) has written for the South African media, marketing and advertising industries for more than 15 years. A former editor of M&M in Independent Newspapers and contributor to Bizcommunity, AdFocus, AdReview and the Ad Annual, she has also produced for various television networks and currently consults on communication strategy and media liaison.
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