3 minute read

Rethinking Retail

I sat down with Andrew Smith, CEO of Yuppiechef, in the wake of the e-commerce company opening their fourth physical store. We spoke about the motivation behind creating physical stores, the store of the future and Amazon Go.

BY SAARAH SURVÉ

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How did the name Yuppiechef come about?

It was a flash of inspiration. Shane Dryden, co-founder of Yuppiechef, went on holiday and came back with the name, colour scheme and logo (a cookie cutter). The name has worked for us. When we started, nobody was using the word ‘yuppie’. In a way it was derogatory, but in our context, we’re not chefs, and we’re not selling to chefs. To be called a yuppiechef is fine, because you’re saying “hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, but look at the cool tools I have”. It’s celebrating the fact that we’re all about having great equipment and ingredients and enjoying the process.

You can say: “I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m trying my best, growing and improving.”

What was the motivation behind creating physical stores?

We’ve been online for 12 years, growing rapidly and doing well. A lot of people know about us. We would be in a room and people would say: “Oh, Yuppiechef! We love you guys. We get your newsletters.” But when we asked them what they’ve bought from us, they would answer: “No, I’ve never shopped from you.”

The fact that our brand is really strong and that we’re good online, we know that we can nail the online shopping experience. But so much retail in South Africa still happens in physical stores – some say as much as 98%. As much as we can perfect online, we were losing out on a lot of customers who would love to shop with us, but don’t trust online, or don’t think about it. Some other reasons are they need a product urgently, or they don’t know what they want, so they’d prefer to stand in a store and look at stuff.

We’ve started to shift our thinking from an e-commerce company in the last year or two, to say that retail is just retail and there isn’t a difference between physical and e-commerce. Physical retailers are realising that customers want online, and the same is happening in reverse. Online retailers, like ours, are seeing customers want a physical store.

It was the next step of growth and expectation from customers.

What does the store of the future look like?

We’ve already got little bits of it, but it’s a continuation of some of those things. In South Africa, physical retail is an experience and in Gauteng particularly, people go to malls as safe, fun spaces to be.

It is imperative to make being in a store an experience, which can mean different things. We’ve started doing demonstrations – our stores all have working kitchens, with stove tops and sinks.

There is also the experience of getting good advice from someone in-store so even if you don’t leave with an item, you have experience of the brand and you’ve interacted with people and the products.

This will continue into the future – thinking about physical stores being a sort of experience, and not only about the transaction.

The other part is that it has to be a single, seamless experience, integrating online and offline. We’ve got little pieces of that: QR codes on our price tags that when scanned bring up the product reviews and videos.

Payment and checkout have to be quick and easy. Nobody wants to stand in queues. It’s about speeding up the whole process. All of these components working together is part of the future.

Is an Amazon Go store something that you’d aspire towards?

I think some of that is a little bit of hype. The reality is a little different, but there are some things that you can do that can make the process quicker, easier and slicker. If you’ve got a linked account, because you’ve created an online profile with your credit card, you can pick up the item and use your app to pay. It’s not quite as extreme as just walking out of the store.

How do you get the most out of your day?

The role of a leader is to try and not do things yourself. Shane and I have done everything: packed boxes, answered phones, marketing, tech and finance. As you grow, you need to try and set up the right teams and structures. A big part of our role is to try and facilitate the teams doing really good work.

People say that I must be so busy with the stores, but I don’t physically do anything in the store. I like being involved and if I help out it’s because I like to do so. It’s about trying to create an environment for people to do really good things. I have a family, so I don’t try to be productive 24 hours a day. I set limits and constraints so that I can be home with my family.

How do you wind down?

Definitely with family. I have two boys. Kids’ activities are a good distraction. It takes you out of your normal day. Walking and reading.

What book are you currently reading?

I’m reading The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It’s a novel about a guy leading a manufacturing company. He has three months to turn it around. He is going through the process of figuring out why his plant is inefficient and what he should do to improve. It’s a business book, but set as a narrative.