Liquorland Glen Eden, our busiest store, shifts around 60 pallets of stock in a normal week to serve customers from Glen Eden all the way out to the west coast. It’s been a key part of our portfolio for years and the building hasn’t really kept up so we’re fixing that.
We’re excited to launch an extensive new renovation including a $130,000 solar project, a full redesign of the back of house, bigger beer and wine chillers, more storage, and proper staff facilities. The solar’s pilot will improve our carbon footprint and offset the cost of running a big chiller, especially over the hot summer months when we have the most sunshine and it has to work hardest! If it stacks up we’ll look at putting it in across more of our sites to improve our sustainability as an organisation.
Aaron Walding, our GM Retail, says the scale of the store makes even the basic stuff harder than you’d expect.
“It’s about making sure we’re operating as safely, efficiently and responsibly as it can for our people, our customers and, through the solar pilot, in the way we use energy. If we can get those things right at the scale of Glen Eden, there are learnings we can take across the rest of our network.”
The major changes are back of house where right now the team unload every pallet by hand. Box by box, off the pallet, out onto the floor. When you’re doing 60 pallets a week and the next truck turns up before you’ve finished the last lot, it stacks up quickly and puts a major strain on our team and operations.
The redevelopment is moving the chiller and the rear access around so full pallets can go straight from the truck onto the shop floor. We’ve also picked up the old grocery shop next door, which gives us more storage plus a overdue staff room and office for the manager.
“When you’re receiving pallet after pallet, having the team manually unload it while more stock builds up behind them puts real physical and mental pressure on people,” says Aaron. “Being able to move full pallets straight onto the shop floor will take a significant amount of manual handling out of the process. Combined with more storage and a proper staff space away from the noise and activity of the store, it will be a big change for the team.”
Out the front it’s mostly about refrigeration. We’re pulling out the six wine fridges and putting in a purpose-built 16-door chiller, and extending the beer chiller by a couple of metres. That means more cold stock and shelves at safer heights people can actually reach.
“Christmas really exposes the limits of our current refrigeration. Beer and wine account for more than half of sales across our stores, so when you’re moving the volume of wine we do at Glen Eden, six fridges simply aren’t enough to keep up,” says Aaron.
The store will shut for four days from 3pm Sunday 30th August and reopening 11am 4th September.
Every store we run is owned by the community it sits in, and whatever’s left at the end of the year goes back into local groups, clubs and kaupapa across The West. Looking after the property and the people working in them is the key that makes it possible.
Learn more about our stores and venues at thetrusts.co.nz.
