Convenience strategy & concept development
Market
Retail
Location
Belgium
Colruyt Group is a Belgian retail group that focuses on food and health. It is a family business based on passion and expertise, simplicity, and efficiency. They knew they had to expand their range with convenience products to strengthen the relationship with their existing customer base and to attract new customers.
This required innovation from within the company itself. At that point Colruyt Group had no pre-cut products, fresh ready-made meals, or to-go lunch dishes in their range. Next Level Concepts supported them for two and a half years, working in an internal innovation team on new channels and innovative concepts and formulas for their portfolio, focused on comfort and convenience. This process included strategic and creative sessions, inspiring trend tours, and concept tests.
A key part of this extensive process was setting up canteens with vending machines. Hospitality spaces that offer the relaxed atmosphere of a company canteen, but without the burden of an entire kitchen, a group of staff, and everything that goes with it. Aligning with Colruyt Group’s strategy and philosophy.
We developed a lot of distinctive ideas. Ideas that needed to be scalable above all. After all, Colruyt Group would be creating a hundred company canteens, not just one. We drew up business cases, conducted tests on a smaller scale, and implemented optimizations before rolling out the innovations on a large scale.
To maintain a close connection with existing customers and to attract new customers, we supported Colruyt Group in adding new channels and concepts to their convenience offer and unmanned stores. Our proven path of strategic and creative sessions, inspirational trend tours, and thorough testing, lead to a new point-of-sale concept that Colruyt was able to scale and extend.
