Building the Perfect Planogram: Optimizing Your Cold Beverage Mix

When it comes to building a cold beverage planogram set, it’s easy to be influenced by personal preferences and biases. Maybe someone on your team insists on pushing a certain brand, or a loyal customer is always looking for grape soda. Are these the right choices? To optimize your sales, it’s important to remain diligent and make product decisions based on data and facts.

Building the right assortment starts with having all the categories covered. Specific drinks pair better with different meals, dayparts, and/or consumers. Soft drinks, juices, energy drinks, isotonics, iced tea, and various types of water should all be represented. It is better to reduce the number of individual SKUs than to eliminate a category altogether. Even in the smallest retail spaces there should be sufficient room to stock up top sellers. If there are multiple coolers or machines side-by-side this could be used to extend the overall planogram space as it will allow you to take advantage of the extra area. However, if your beverage equipment is situated at opposite ends of the floor plan, you should treat them as separate units.

A best practice is to lead with the most recognizable brand by group. For example, placing Coca-Cola at the start of the carbonated soft drinks, or Gatorade to begin the isotonics/sports drink section.  Consumers will search from left to right for visual cues, such as logos and colours, to locate their preferred beverage choices, so it’s important to position products accordingly. The core selection within each category should be based on relevant market data and product rankings from credible sources such as Nielsen. It’s good to stay on top of trends and performance, but there is one category that has stood the test of time: carbonated soft drinks. To this day, carbonated soft drinks are the number one segment and should make up at least 25% (or more) of your shelf space. This is as a starting point and may need to be even higher depending on your type of business.

As health and wellness continues to be important to consumers, operators should offer more low-calorie options. This can include diet or “zero” branded items as well as sparkling and premium waters. It’s essential to always have a “better for you” choice next to the traditional sodas and juices.

What About New Products and Innovations?

It can feel overwhelming with the number of new products, brand launches, and added flavours coming out each year and you can bet your cold beverage sales rep will bring them up every chance they get. Innovation should only be included in larger planograms to avoid cannibalization of core SKUs and make up less than 10% of total space. For best results, they should be positioned alongside their associated brand and/or category.

The point of adding new products and innovations to your product mix is to keep the planogram exciting and refreshed with new additions as it can introduce new customers to a stagnant category and help to create impulse purchases. The trick is being selective, trying out, and determining your studs and duds. The studs will instantly become top performers and likely move from trial innovation to your core portfolio. The duds, on the other hand, will take up valuable space and can become an inventory risk. It’s okay to take chances, however if something isn’t selling it’s your imperative as an operator to move on quickly!

Need assistance in sourcing the perfect beverage mix for your vending, office coffee, or micro-market operation? Let Complete Purchasing Services (CPS) Vending help you to find the perfect mix of products for your customer base.

About the Author:

Andrew Smith is the Procurement Director of Consumer-Packaged-Goods at Complete Purchasing Services Inc, a leading supply chain solutions provider for hospitality and non-commercial clients in Canada. Andrew has been in the foodservice industry for 8+ years with expertise on cold beverage strategy and CPG category development. Learn more about Complete Purchasing Services by visiting eCPS.ca.