Endeavour Group has opened an additional three stores under the new Dan Murphy’s flagship design, after unveiling the first in South Melbourne earlier this year.
The new concept stores are located at Hyde Park in WA, Hamilton in QLD and Ascot Vale in VIC, and have had completed renewals following significant investments of over $1 million each. Within this financial year, Endeavour Group plans to have 10 stores completed under the concept.
The new-look stores hero a customer experience based in drinks education, discovery, technology and sustainability. Each store has a central area where customers can have ‘magic moments’ such as product tastings and on-demand micro-classes, hosted by in-store product experts. There is also a merchant’s corner with recommendations from the store’s Wine Merchant, and highlighted areas that contain engaging information about products and segments.
“We know customers expect so much more from us than products on shelves, which is why we are increasingly innovating and using technology to create our stores of the future,” said Dan Murphy’s Managing Director, Alex Freudmann.
“The most important thing for us is that the customer is in charge of how and what they want to experience or educate themselves about.”
This new concept also has a localised approach, developed using customers insights, to provide a curated offering of what shoppers in the area most want, while also focusing on local products. One example of this is with Dan Murphy’s Hyde Park, which, like the first new concept store in Melbourne, has a huge range of craft beer, with almost 500 chilled SKUs. This is the biggest craft beer range in any Dan Murphy’s store across the country, and close to 40 per cent of these are from WA.
“West Australians spend more on craft beer than any other state according to our sales data, and Dan Murphy’s Hyde Park is our best performing store in the entire country when it comes to craft beer. The approach to our stores of the future is to offer curated ranges based on what locals prefer, which is why we wanted to make sure this store has our widest range of craft beer in the country,” Freudmann said.
“We are committed to continuing to support local brands and it’s great to see such a huge offering of West Australian craft beers. It’s an exciting time for Australian brewers, winemakers and distillers – there is a lot of innovation in the space, and we are seeing customers choosing to support local products more than ever.”
In addition to customer experience innovations, the new Dan Murphy’s stores use electronic shelf labels (ESLs), designed to make things easier for store staff. These ESLs are equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which connects back to the educational element. Shoppers can simply tap their smartphone against the label to get product information or reviews, to educate themselves further.
“An average store will beat hundreds of prices every week, and changing those price tickets can be quite time consuming for the team, but with ESL tags, it’s simple and efficient. We are also seeing that stores that have ESL use 90 per cent less paper, so the technology will help us reduce paper usage,” Freudmann said.
“ESL will help us communicate with shoppers in a new way, reduce paper usage and make our store teams more efficient.”
