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A bold move from the Big Red One this week with the launch of Shoprite’s standalone MediRite Plus, which in addition to the usual pharmacy offering will provide wellness products, beauty and personal care products and baby brands, likely to include Shoprite’s own Little Me range. Specialised healthcare items like wheelchairs, walkers and crutches are also on offer, as are services like the newly launched PrepMyScript, which enables pre-ordering of chronic medication, supported by the MediRite Courier Pharmacy Service for free door-to-door delivery, with all major medical aids onboard. And in line with the aggressive expansion of the loyalty programme, Xtra Savings rewards naturally apply. The sceptics among you (you know who you are) will doubtless point out that Shoprite’s footprint of 145 in-store and standalone pharmacies lags the leaders in market share, with Clicks at 621 pharmacies nationwide and Dis-Chem at 199. To which Shoprite would doubtless say, hold my beer (or in this case my nourishing superfood drink).

Comment: And we ourselves would point to the Xtra Savings programme, last of the loyalty programmes to launch but now by no means the smallest. Look for growth both organically and acquisitively in the months to come.

Big up to SPAR this week, whose rural hub programme has been announced as the winner in the rural and township development category at the Absa Business Day Supplier Development Awards for the second consecutive year. Launched in 2016, the hub contributes towards food security, food safety, nutrition, job creation and transformation by empowering small-scale farmers through skills transfer and economic participation. The first hub was established in Limpopo with five small-scale farmers producing vegetables on 22 hectares of farmland. Since then, it has expanded to 13 farmers on 126 hectares, all of whom provide produce to local SPAR stores. In other SPAR news, the Verdant One has added two new SUPERSPARs to its haul in KZN – one in the subtropical resort town of Umkomaas on the South Coast, and the other in the more rarefied environs of the Kensington shopping centre in Durban North. Both were upgraded by their owners from existing SPAR stores.

Comment: SPAR’s strategy of growth by store upgrading is well-established and effective, and entirely suited to the owner-manager model.

No Black Friday reporting from the retailers just yet, but online payment gateway PayFast has some illuminating numbers: after 2020’s record-breaking Black Friday weekend, total online transaction volumes during this year’s event increased by a further +34%, with a +30% increase in total purchase values. The average basket size at R1,208 marked a slight decline from 2020. Unrelated, Massmart has settled its dispute with Saccawu, members of whom have been on a wage strike at Builders Warehouse, where they make up around 12% of store staff. The action did not materially affect Massmart’s Black Friday performance, apparently. North of the border, Pick n Pay and partner TM Supermarkets are investing in new stores and upgrading others, encouraged by a growth in sales and robust existing revenues. Finally, Clicks has just opened a new store-within-a-store beauty concept at Canal Walk, carrying a broader health and beauty offering and providing experiential makeover booths with selfie mirrors.

Comment: As more competitors encroach the health and beauty space, Clicks is upping its game in existing stores rather than just expanding its footprint.

In a bold innovation of the sort that has characterised the German discounter over the years, Aldi in Australia has launched a whole new way for punters to stock up on just a few items at a time rather than a whole trolley load. Called “shopping baskets”, the brightly coloured plastic receptacles have handles instead of wheels, and if used correctly, allow for the single-hand operation of such devices as cellphones and books. “To make it more efficient for our customers to do a smaller grocery shop, we will be introducing shopping baskets across all of our stores,” explained the business. In the UK, in the meantime, Aldi has launched a larger trolley for punters wishing to purchase the bulkier non-grocery items (like trampolines) from its Specialbuys aisle. Also in the UK, Lidl have confessed that it is harder than usual to keep the shelves stocked, what with shortages of drivers, warehouse workers and food processing staff, and the COVID-related pressure on global supply chains. Finally, in France, Carrefour have teamed up with Cash Converters to offer an online marketplace for second-hand goods, from appliances to jewellery, called ‘Carrefour Occasion’.

Comment: A move which smacks of desperation to us, but then we know little of the French used goods market to be honest.

As global markets for artisanal coffee and herbal infusions have burgeoned, traditional tea – the soothing brown beverage which has lubricated the construction of several empires – has taken a hit. And perhaps no one has felt this as sharply as Unilever, which owns both PG Tips and Lipton, and whose majestic clippers have until recently been a familiar sight in harbours around the world. Maybe. Be this as it may, it appears that Le Grand Bleu has found a buyer for parts of its global tea business – also known as ekaterra – in the form of buyout firm CVC Capital Partners, which is paying $5bn for the asset. The big winner in the deal is Unilever CEO Alan Jope, who has been attempting to adjust the company’s portfolio to keep up with changing consumer tastes but had to abandon the $1bn sale of a portfolio of beauty products earlier this year after failing to attract a qualified buyer. “The evolution of our portfolio into higher growth spaces is an important part of our growth strategy," says Mr J. “Our decision to sell ekaterra demonstrates further progress in delivering against our plans.” The transaction excludes the tea units in India and Indonesia and its partnerships in the ready-to-drink tea market, such as its stake in a joint venture with PepsiCo Inc.

Comment: A solid move, but a poignant one, nevertheless.

Tiger Brands is taking its iconic Black Cat range to the next level, with the addition of chocolate to peanut butter in a new range of snacking products. In Kenya, Nestlé is launching Nescafé 3-in-1 Creamy White, a mix of coffee and creamer that meets the needs of a younger, more urban market that knows what it’s going and where it wants. Finally, speaking of bold innovations, which we were just now, Distell has picked up a NielsenIQ BASES Top Breakthrough Innovation 2021 award for its Esprit range of fruity ready-to-drink flavoured alcoholic beverages, which it launched in 2019. Anyone see the problem here? Anyone of a certain age that is? That’s right. Esprit was the range of fruity ready-to-drink flavoured alcoholic beverages that rendered our evenings in the Student Union so colourful back in the eighties. Kiwifruit Esprit, almost before Kiwifruit had even been invented.

Comment: Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it.

Retail trade sales for the month of October then, released just yesterday as it happens. Measured in real terms, at constant 2015 prices, and reported by the hoary sages over at Statistics South Africa, retail trade sales increased by +1.8% YOY with the main contributors being pharmaceuticals and medical goods, cosmetics and toiletries at +14.8% and textiles, clothing, footwear and leather goods at +6.2%. Our own industry, which StatsSA in its wisdom calls “Food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores” performed rather disappointingly, declining -1.9% YOY and came out -0.8% down even on Oct 2019 (that’s pre-COVID if you will recall). And then there’s our fiscus: GDP shrank -1.5% in the third quarter of the year, dragged thither by ongoing COVID restrictions and by the civil unrest. Agriculture, which was something of a bulwark for the economy in the earlier months of the year, slumped by -13.6%, with various crop types recording losses from arson. Agriculture and trade were similarly affected. Finally, household spending was down by -2.4%.

Comment: Looks like we’ll be needing that holiday season to return us to positive growth.