FAB TALKS
Growing across multiple channels
Lagardère Travel Retail Executive Vice President Foodservice Global Mélanie Guilldou shared some fascinating insights into how the company is focusing on pleasure to incentivise travellers to spend money as they pass through the airport.
Lagardère Travel Retail Executive Vice President Foodservice Global Mélanie Guilldou discussed the company’s multi-pronged growth strategy in a session titled ‘Converging Channels: The Fusion of F&B and Retail’.
She homed in on the importance of ‘retailtainment’, citing Lagardère Travel Retail’s attractive portfolio of brands translated from downtown environments. Among them is the ‘Bound’ concept store, a travel essentials, souvenir and speciality coffee shop at Brisbane Airport with a simple Scandinavian-style design. The space offers travellers a uniquely Queensland experience, celebrating the best of local flavours and producers with biscuits, liqueurs and preserves stacked high and locally brewed, award-winning coffee on the counter from Bellissimo Coffee.
“Bringing food [to these stores] is the best way to create this nicer experience,” she said of the offering, which also has a wide selection of books, local craft spirits and artisan pastries from neighbourhood bakery Jocelyn’s Provisions.
“We developed this specifically to attract more people to the store and for them to have a different experience once there,” she said. “From day one it started creating a really strong interest from customers.”
Guilldou said that blurring the lines between different product categories and celebrating the best of local businesses has helped Lagardère Travel Retail to grow.
“We have already done this successfully in Warsaw, Holland and Prague, where we have this same concept of shops that mix various items in one place,” she added.
“For example, as well as food and drink, we have socially responsible clothes and eco-friendly beauty products curated together that also celebrate local producers.”
She said the four main experience drivers for shoppers were convenience, uniqueness, pleasure/experience and consciousness.
Finding a way to combine these four factors, Guilldou said, was key to helping consumers slow down, relax and stay in one place at the airport.
Locally baked goods, artisan coffee and a stylish interior have all contributed to the success of Lagardère’s Bound concept store in Brisbane
Bake a bigger cake...
Guilldou emphasised how offering choice and moments of pleasure can bring benefits not only for consumers but also across the entire value chain. “It can bring many benefits, but first the goal is not to cannibalise anything but simply to bake a bigger cake,” she said.
“And we have been able to monitor and prove that this [strategy] has created value and maximised revenues.”
Gilldou also touched on a huge story for Lagardère Group – the 100% acquisition of highly regarded North American food & beverage operator Tastes on the Fly, a deal that was made official soon after the FAB+ Conference. The US business will now be combined with Paradies Lagardère (Lagardère Travel Retail’s North American division). It operates restaurants and food & beverage concepts in the US and Canada in more than 25 locations and five major airport platforms. Combining the two businesses creates the second-largest player in North America’s travel retail and foodservice industry. “We needed to increase our footprint,” she said. “And, of course, North America is a huge place to target that critical mass. But Tastes on the Fly is complementary not only in terms of its geographical footprint but also in its excellence. They are very good and will help us to improve the quality of our offer.”
You can read more about the agreement here.
Guilldou touched on the latest consumer trends in travel retail
Tastes on the Fly was founded by four restaurant entrepreneurs – including Executive Chairman Michael Levine – in 1999. The company is renowned for its culture of inclusion and diversity that elevates women in leadership positions. Half of its executive leadership is female, including CEO Edie Ames, as well as many line managers and administrative staff.
Asked what she gains from FAB+, Guilldou concluded by saying: “We are always stronger hearing from different people. We love having this very collaborative event with very well-respected personalities from the industry.”
Guilldou discussed Lagardère’s strategy for food & beverage with Dermot Davitt
FAB eZine
January 2024
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