The Hindu Business Line : Heritage Foods plans 100 Fresh@ stores

Chennai, June 28 The Rs 292-crore Heritage Foods’ grocery retail chain, Fresh@, which has 24 stores across the cities of Hyderabad, Bangalore and now Chennai, plans to rapidly scale up and open 100 stores across these cities by the end of this fiscal in the first phase of its expansion. This would entail an investment of Rs 120 crore.

Mr M.S. Rao, President, Heritage Foods India Ltd, speaking to the media at the launch of its third store in the city, Fresh@ Kotturpuram, a residential area, said the expansion of the chain of stores, all company-owned for now, will be through a combination of debt and internal accruals. He indicated that in the second phase, the company would look at fresh capital structuring, which could entail seeking funds from other investors. Heritage will also look at opening stores in other cities once these three cities are saturated. The chain is targeting a turnover of Rs 200 crore this year.

Bakery format

Mr Santhosh Unni, Head (Operations & Marketing), Retail Division, said Heritage also has plans to unveil a bakery format a couple of months from now as well as a chilled meat private label as well.

Mr S. Jagdish, Vice-President, Retail Division, said stocking at stores in the city has taken into account local preferences and tastes.

Mr Jagdish said that there would be at least 150 stock keeping units of goods and brands ranging from rice, dals and spices among others which would be available only in Chennai stores and not in the other cities. For example, the t alcum powder, Gokul Santol, is a strong brand in the Chennai market, unlike elsewhere, and would find prominence on the shelves.

On a quick tour of the 2,500 sq. ft store, Mr Jagdish said that Heritage had earlier embarked on a “relationship farming” exercise where it worked with clusters of farmers in Krishnagiri, Chittoor and Kolar to supply vegetables to the three cities.

Unlike a mandi, where the vegetables were received from farmers after at least 12 hours, he said that produce was sourced from the farmers and sent overnight to the stores after sorting and grading in a matter of eight hours.

Home delivery

Fresh@ plans a structured home delivery programme. It has set up a call centre where customers can call in with their orders and also plans a Web site soon for orders. It has also launched a fresh@privileges loyalty programme with rewards and special schemes planned. This programme would help the chain understand consumer purchase cycles and habits as well as locality-wise preferences and help it work on personalised activities for the customers.

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