Booker news

Budgens, part of the Booker Group, is to roll out convenience stores to 20 Shell forecourt sites in the UK, following four successful trials. Follows the success of four trials The official site openings follows the success of trials at four of Shell’s 1,000 retail outlets. The first “Budgens at Shell” site has just opened in Farnborough, Hampshire, with the remaining 20 to follow by the en...

The UK Competition and Markets Authority is to launch an in-depth 'phase 2' investigation into the proposed merger between leading UK retailer Tesco and leading UK wholesaler Booker.  This means the matter will now pass to a new set of decision makers, with an inquiry group to be selected from the CMA's independent panel members.  Limited to a statutory maximum time span of 24 weeks, the final re...

Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler Booker has announced performance figures for the 12 weeks to 16 June, reporting like-for-like sales ahead by 4.2%, well ahead of the +0.7% seen in the prior quarter (to 24 March). Favoured by Easter timing and boosted by good weather With Easter falling three weeks later this year than in 2016, Booker's Q1 period benefited from the full festive trading...

Tesco has urged the UK's Competition and Markets Authority to speed up its investigation into the grocer's £3.7bn merger with wholesale and convenience business, Booker. Speeding up first phase of inquiry In a statement released to the London Stock Exchange this morning, Tesco said that it had requested the CMA to use its 'fast track' process to reach the more detailed Phase 2 stage. It not...

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has announced the initiation of its preliminary, and statutory, investigation of the potential competition issues around the proposed merger between the UK's leading national grocery retailer, Tesco, and the leading national grocery wholesaler, Booker. Preliminary phase runs to 25 July In an initial stage the CMA is now gathering feedback from key th...

Leading UK grocery wholesaler, Booker has announced operating profit up by 14% for its fiscal 2016/17, off total sales of £5,328m.  This represents an improved margin of 3.3%, underlining the trading and operational benefits achieved from the acquisition of the Londis and Budgens symbol networks in 2015, as well as the stronger profitability of the growing foodservice business. Symbols now wor...

Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler, Booker has announced its trading headlines for the 12 weeks to 24 March, with total sales up just 0.5%, slower than Q3 when growth was +2.9%.  However, the key drag on performance was a significant steepening decline in tobacco sales, where the onset of new plain-packaging and pack size regulations, saw the category sink by -7.9%.  In contrast growth in non...

More than 800 jobs have been lost after Food Retailer Operations Limited, the owner of 34 Budgens stores, collapsed into administration. Hilco Capital, appoints PwC as administrator Food Retailer Operations Limited bought the stores from the Co-operative Group in July and said at the time "there are no planned redundancies" and stores will continue "trading as usual". But last month, Food...

Leading UK food and grocery wholesaler has reported Q3 sales up by 2.9% for the 16 weeks to 30 December.  This is the first quarter reported since the annualisation of the acquisition of the Budgens and Londis operation in September, and shows solid performance across all divisions of the business.  However, sales of tobacco continue to underperform, down 1.3%.  2017 is also likely to a difficult...

Budgens is trialling a new mobile app which enables customers to build shopping lists, create navigation guides, scan barcodes and checkout using their smartphones at the point of sale (PoS). Enhancing convenience across the in-store journey The Ubamarket app aims to improve the shopping experience. It rearranges users' shopping lists upon entry to the store to reflect layout and creat...