Talking Retail Grocery and product news for independent retailers
The latest stores to feature Fill Your Own include Lisburn in Northern Ireland, Stratford City in London, Sears Solihull in the West Midlands, Gyle in Edinburgh, Vangarde Monks in York, and Wolstanton Stoke in Staffordshire – joining three existing stores in Manchester, Hedge End in Southampton and Staines Two Rivers in Surrey. By mid-June, Fill Your Own will also be introduced to M&S stores in Aintree in Liverpool and Meadowhall in Sheffield.
Fill Your Own, which first launched in December 2019, offers more than 60 lines of refillable groceries – including pasta, rice, cereal, nuts, frozen fruit and a range of bake-at-home items, such as all-butter croissants, pain au chocolats, and apricot twists.
The retailer said it is now highlighting that the concept offers better value per gram compared to packaged alternatives – with the same M&S quality customers love – across shelf-edge messaging.
Carmel McQuaid, head of sustainable business, said: “Fill Your Own has been hugely popular with our customers since it launched. They’ve told us that it’s easy to understand, offers a huge variety of the high-quality, great value M&S products they love, and supports with portion control.
“Importantly, Fill Your Own is helping our customers – and our business – to reduce and reuse plastic and this initiative has the potential to save thousands of units each year. As our customers have navigated this completely new way of shopping, we’ve continued to test, learn and adapt the scheme based on their feedback and now we’re ready to expand it to more locations and introduce new product lines.”
M&S is planning to extend the Fill Your Own product range by Autumn with new lines including wasabi peas, dried mango and apple, cashew nuts and giant wholewheat cous cous – bringing the range to nearly 100 lines in total.
During 2020-21 M&S continued taking action to reduce food waste by introducing new technology to enable its stores to donate more surplus food more often. The new app is enabling the retailer to more than double the amount of food being donated across most stores – leading to a 126% increase in donations from last year and 11.8m meals donated throughout 2020-21. The retailer also launched a new initiative to turn freshly baked, unsold baguettes and boules into frozen garlic bread each day, which rolled out to 200 stores following a successful trial. The initiative extends the life of bakery products by 30 days.
Steve Rowe, chief executive of M&S, said: “In the face of unprecedented crisis, we did not lose sight of the goal of our transformation; to return M&S to sustainable, profitable growth and deliver long-term value for all our stakeholders. It is through Plan A – our multi-year sustainability action plan – that we address the risks and opportunities that environmental and societal issues present to us as a business. It drives us to make better choices to ensure M&S, and the precious resources and planet we rely on, are in better shape for the future.”
The retailer has extended its climate change commitment from being carbon neutral, which it has maintained since 2012, to reach net-zero emissions in its operations by 2035.
