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I am sure that FT columnist Michael Skapinker has written about traffic lights food labelling before and his latest article is provocatively called: The food companies that make people fat. He criticises Coca-Cola and Unilever for sticking with guideline daily amounts (GDAs) when traffic lights work much better. Former Walmart Europe public affairs head Bernard Hughes wrote in to support Skapinker. He said: "There isn't ever a perfect information system flowing with beautiful logic. But traffic lights give powerful direction to the busy consumer." But in this age of smart phones surely this debate over the labelling on the packaging is easily overcome. The government can simply issue an app that when held over a bar code provides shoppers with a traffic light system. The supermarkets could do this on their websites. Surely the whole point about the future is that the internet and limitless data storage means that the shopper is being empowered with the informatio

In person, Frank Furness presents his ideas so that they really inspire. He is a natural story teller and his material joins up in your mind into a long list of actions. In print, the energy levels are lower and it may be that people who have not been to one of Furness's seminars will find it harder to use. However, Walking with Tigers is a book that has lots of great ideas in it. For example, on the subject of goal setting: "Years ago I was somewhat reluctant to buy a course on the subject. At the time it cost two months' salary and I didn't even know what goal setting was. But the salesman assured me it was all I needed to accomplish my dreams. I was really excited about it when I got the books and the tapes and spent hours absorbing the information - and that's an important part of the process. Goal setting is all about repetitiveness until the message is ingrained." I think this really captures the uncertainty that people feel about investing

There are three reasons to read Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc, who developed the world’s best fast food franchise, McDonald’s. The first is to understand how great salesmen work. The second is to understand how to lead and develop a great business. The third, and the one which this review will dwell on, is to understand how a good franchise should work. While there is a difference between a franchise and a symbol group, there are a great many independent retailers in the UK considering some sort of tie up with a wholesaler or buying group to propel their business forward. Kroc’s thoughts provide a useful benchmark to compare what is on offer. “There is a basic conflict in trying to treat a man as a partner on the one hand while selling him something at a profit on the other,” says Kroc. When setting up the McDonald’s franchise system, he decided that it would not supply its operators. This was because he believed that once in the supply business, he would become more conce

Luke Johnson, the entrepreneur behind Pizza Express and former head of Channel 4, is a compulsive reader and he warmly recommended Made in America by Sam Walton. For years I resisted the chance to read the story of the man who made Walmart and boy was I wrong. Quite simply this is a brilliant manual on what you need to do to be a successful independent retailer. In one chapter on thinking small, Walton says: “I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not the biggest.” In 1960 in a newspaper article called Success Story of the Year it described how he and his family and managers had built up a nine strong chain of variety stores. He told the paper that nine was as big as it could get as it was as many as he could supervise. Most readers don’t need to worry how he moved beyond nine to become the biggest retailer in history (he did this by hiring and inspiring great people). What they need to recognise is that Walton remained a great independent retailer till

One person cannot be the sole catalyst for change. Great ideas can come from anywhere. You have to trust your team.   These thoughts on leading change from Richard Gerver, formerly a star head teacher and now a travelling speaker, form a cornerstone of Change, his exciting new book published by Penguin. Gerver is a maverick and most independent retailers will warm to him immediately from the pacey prologue. Change is a short book. It is beautifully presented and filled with ideas that will encourage you to live your dreams and to connect to other people. “We have all got to stop assuming we live in unique little silos that nobody else could possibly understand,” says Gerver. He recommends that you take time out from your shop to explore the world and learn half-a-day at a time from other people’s experiences. His book is not about self-help nor is it a management book. What Change does do is give readers ideas on how their ideas about developing their businesses (and

The most memorable idea in John Stanley’s keynote presentation at the Local Shop Summit was that the world of retailing will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 100.   As a result, local shopkeepers were going to have to change their thinking, embracing things like using social media to establish themselves as “day makers” for their local communities. The usual suspects heard his message and their positive feedback energised the team who put together the event. But what of the other retailers there: what were they thinking? I don’t know but I will have a stab at it. One of the first retailers I met more than 20 years ago when I started to cover this industry ran a small local shop and was passionate about his customers and what he sold. In the town where he operated, his shop had a reputation as the place to go for hobby magazines and collectables. His passion for news and for stocking the latest stuff translated into a successful business. Howev

There is a lot of talk about growth and the convenience channel and it was no different at the Local Shop Summit in Torquay earlier this month. With more than 200 retailers in the audience, John Kinney, retail director of Today’s, asked a simple question: Who was in growth? The answer on the electronic pads was 42%. As industry figures show that more people are shopping more frequently in local shops - and experts say more than £10 billion in extra sales will be in the convenience channel by 2018 - where is the growth? Principally in supermarket stores and in symbol groups, says Kinney. Why? Because the biggest area of convenience is top up shopping and this plays to the supermarket operators’ strengths. What he did not say is that much of that £10 billion is not new money but simply the transfer of sales from a Tesco out of town to a Tesco in a high street. What is encouraging for independents, particularly those in symbol groups, is that they are winning sales from thes