Morrisons has overhauled its wine buying team with a shift away from regionally focused remits.
The retailer previously followed the traditional supermarket model of having different buyers focused on specific wine regions, but has now changed its wine buyers’ remits to focus on red, white, rosé and sparkling wines.
This meant buyers would work “around customers’ mindset, which is principally whether to buy red, white, rosé or sparkling”, a Morrisons spokeswoman told The Grocer.
The retailer’s dedicated wine sourcing experts, who are not part of the buying team, would remain focused on specific countries, she stressed.
One source at a major supplier said the move could “make things more complicated, because if you’ve got red and white wine, you’ll now be seeing two different buyers, whereas before you would have just to know the buyer for your region”.
However, they suggested dealing with different buyers for different parts of a portfolio could on the other hand prove advantageous. “Because if you get stuck with one buyer, you might be able to make a bit of progress with the other now.”
It comes as Morrisons has increased its share of total take-home wine sales from 8.6% to 9% over the past year [Kantar Worldpanel 52 w/e 2 December 2018].
However, it still trails behind the rest of the big four - Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco’s shares of the wine market come in at 16.%, 11.7% and 26.1% respectively [Kantar].
No comments yet