The Crisp Continuum

So, before we delve further into the world of quantum retail, we could do with a little light snack.

Crisps are Britain’s favourite snack food. You call them chips in America, but in Britain we call chips chips. So I’m glad we cleared that up.

Britain’s most popular crisp is Walkers Ready Salted. More packs are sold of Walkers Ready Salted than any other crisp, closely followed by Cheese and Onion and Salt and Vinegar. This is the crisp industry holy trinity. If you sell crisps, you likely stock Walkers. If somebody comes in asking for crisps, you wave your arm in the direction of your display of Ready Salted, Cheese and Onion and Salt and Vinegar and probably get a sale.

Here’s the thing though. If you look just at ROI – Return on Investment – on crisps, Ready Salted give you a marginally better bang for your buck. And in business, that’s what we are told to prioritise. Stock up on Ready Salted, sit back and watch those tasty, salty crisp profits roll in. And if you were on a station forecourt, catering to a busy traveller whose priority was convenience, they probably would.

But your journey into the crisp continuum has just begun. Walkers have $660 million turnover. Their nearest rivals are McCoys (£130M), Supermarket own label (£117M), Kettle Chips (£96M), Tyrells (£46M), Seabrooks (£27M), Golden Wonder, Jacobs, Ritz, Mackies, Burts… and Just Crisps.

If you wanted to be a SPECIALITY crisp shop, you might want to stock all these. In all these flavours and more. In Prawn Cocktail, and Smokey Bacon, and grab bags and multipacks and family bags with a week’s calories worth just waiting for you to gorge yourself on. There are tortilla chips, nuts, lentil snacks, crisp breads… supermarket shelves are laden with choice, both in terms of depth – variety – breadth – manufacturer – and shelf presence to maximise brand exposure. You could literally fill a shop just with UK crisps, before you imported American crisps or European Paprika crisps.

Now when a customer walks in your store and they ask if you sell crisps, you scream “Our store is LITERALLY called World of Crisps. Gaze on my works ye mighty and despair!”

World of Crisps is what we call Top of Mind – it’s a destination store that will attract traganiphiles from miles around. I bet they even have Really Ruthless Spicy Mexican Meatball (my all time favourite flavour, out of production since 1994. I weep bitter tears of regret daily). But stumble into World of Crisps on the way to catching the 10:19 to Basingstoke and you are going to miss your train.

But here’s the 79p question. Realistically, how many packets of crisps does the average customer buy? What your breadth and depth and shelf presence has done is given you a greater chance of sales capture. Of maximising the chance of selling that one packet of crisps. In almost every way that is really bad RoI. It sucks greater than a man who has just eaten spicy Mexican Meatball crisps for the first time and is gulping down the nearest frosty beverage

You see, these are extreme poles on our crisp continuum. We want some kind of breadth, depth, shelf presence, RoI and ToM, simultaneously. How does a binary choice help us here? How many flavours of crisps is choice? How many varieties before we can call ourselves a crisp shop? Where do we stand on the crisp continuum, and is the profit enough?

We stock Just Crisps. The brand. Not, you know, just crisps. I realise it is probably needlessly confusing at this point but hey. “ARE YOU CRAZY DAVE?” I hear you ask “You literally just told us that the brand leader was Walkers!!!”

And that’s why I don’t stock them.

Being a quantum retailer is about choice, but that choice is even more complex. I found the best tasting crisp on the market and I stocked it. I’m not on a commuter rat run, and I’m not World of Crisps. And I’m not Tesco’s. When it comes to crisp my customers are not price sensitive, so I don’t have to compete on convenience or price.

I can choose to compete on taste.

And if you want Walkers, Tesco’s is a minute away. Sainsbury’s a minute away. A dozen newsagents, a minute away. And they are all competing on price and convenience. And they are all competing on the same

one

product.

Because that’s what happens when you chase the biggest brand from the biggest industry leader. Everyone chases the easy money, the low hanging fruit. Or in this case, vegetable.

I chose to be Top of Mind for my crisp curation simply by carrying the best. I chose to believe that my time, my effort, my curation added value. If you travel to my store and eat my crisps, I honestly believe you will agree that they are the best crisps you have ever tasted (pending a time machine, and a conveniently located frosty beverage. For emergencies).

And I guarantee you’ll pass a shop selling Walkers cheaper on the way.

My name is Dave Salisbury, and I have been the quantum retailer.

p.s. why not join the Really Ruthless Apreciation Society here: https://www.facebook.com/ReallyRuthless