Krasnoyarsk grocery retailer Krasny Yar (owned by) expanded its store chain by 15% and began to actively scale its discounter format in Russia. The company also changed its loyalty program, revised the customer journey in the grocery store, launched an online store, plans to introduce scan & go technology and open new dark stores. Angela Ryabova, CEO of the Krasny Yar Group of Companies, spoke about the success and plans of the chain at the Retail Week 2020. The Krasny Yar group developed 2 retail formats: the Krasny Yar grocery stores (66 points) and the Baton discounters (125 points). The first grocery store of the chain was opened in 1997 in the center of Krasnoyarsk. Now more than 100,000 shoppers a day pass through the grocery chain. In 2015, the first Baton discounters were launched. The retailer operates in 25 cities of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Republic of Khakassia and has its own distribution center. In 2018 Magnit (second largest retailer in Russia) was interested in buying Krasny Yar, but in the end decided to start-up its own discount chain.
In 2020, the company focused on expanding the Baton discounter chain and increasing the speed of sales as one of the components of store safety. The incentives for scaling the format were the difficult economic situation in the country and the entry of federal networks into the region. “It was important for us to take our places of presence and actively develop,” explains Angela Ryabova.
Accelerating the shopping process is especially important today, the buyer wants to spend as little time as possible in the store. It was decided to introduce a short route in the Krasny Yar grocery stores, which will allow making daily purchases faster than before. Barriers are removed in the chain's stores, planograms are changed and self-checkout counters are installed. “We used to make a person walk a long way to collect the basket. Now we are reconsidering this approach and believe that there should be a short path in the store. It will be faster and therefore safer,” explains the CEO of the network. The scan & go service, which the retailer intends to launch in the future, should additionally reduce the time of contact with the store. At the entrance to the store, the buyer will be given a portable personal scanner that will allow him to independently “pick” the selected goods. To increase the frequency of visits, which has decreased due to the pandemic, the retailer plans, among other things, with the help of the updated “price” loyalty program, which operates in stores of both formats. According to the program, the amount of cashback depends on how often a customer makes purchases in the group's stores. In the future, the company wants to focus on creating individual offers for buyers. The retailer launched an online store in March. According to the head of the network, the project was done in 3 weeks.
In October, the company processed about 50–70 orders a day with an average bill of 1,600 rubles (US$21). Despite the small number of orders, the retailer will continue to develop the project: make a more convenient catalog, search engines, filters, saturate the virtual store with a wider assortment than in offline outlets. “In the regions, an online store is still more of a service than a business. The money is now in our physical stores. But we believe that it is necessary to continue developing the project, because in 1–2 years it will become a business,” notes Angela Ryabova. Also next year the company will launch several more dark stores in addition to the existing one.
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