Woolworths is taking its food products to schools and events. The clothing and food retailer has a number of separate food services, including WCafes and NowNow for fast food, which are housed under Woolworths Ventures.
“Woolworths Ventures will look at events, food trucks, and tuck shops at schools. We have had quite a lot of demand from schools about improving the quality and the health of the offerings for pupils. And so we tested a tuck shop about 18 months to a year ago at a school, and that’s been exceptionally successful. We’ve now looked at beginning to roll out the tuck shop version. So that’s potentially an opportunity where you introduce young people to the brand,” said Woolworths CEO Roy Bagattini.
Woolworths has also extended trading hours at some of its WCafes into the evening. “It’s a bit of a test opportunity where you sort of try to elevate the cafe into an evening dining experience. So we’re seeing how that’s working. Some really positive feedback. That is being tested in a few locations, and we’ll see how that goes. And then, if we feel positive, we’ll get squarely behind that.”
Woolworths Ventures is home to other businesses, including Absolute Pets, which recently opened its 200th shop; WEdits, a small-format clothing shop; and the liquor shop WCellar.
Bagattini said Woolworths Ventures is the group’s “strategic growth accelerator”.
Woolworths Ventures has recorded double-digit sales growth in the half year to December as the company plans to double down on growing this segment.
Woolworths also sees an opportunity in expanding its coffee offerings.
According to Bagattini, Woolworths sells more than 5-million cappuccinos every year, “and that’s just cappuccino coffee. It’s not lattes; it’s not anything else; it’s just cappuccinos. So again, we see coffee as a big opportunity for us. We’re already the biggest coffee brand in the country. We can leverage our back-end and front-end capabilities, the whole process of the back-end together with the way we show up in the front-end; we can leverage that to really become a sort of a much more significant player in the space.”
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