Our new soapbox-style feature is part of Retail Ready – a new Drinks Retailing initiative which aims to bring the trade together through an exciting series of podcasts and events to help businesses actively prepare for the future. In the first of the series, Jeroboams CEO Matt Tipping reflects on how independent retailers can navigate rising costs, fragile consumer confidence and policy uncertainty. And why doing less, focusing harder and speaking with a more united voice might be the smartest strategy of all.

On the face of it, “how are you ensuring you are ready for the future?” is a straightforward question. However, these are not straightforward times. A combination of government-enforced cost increases including NI, Extended Producer Responsibility and business rates (ours have risen by an average of 53% across our shops) have moved the goalposts in an operating environment which is already very challenging.

Being independent and family owned, we have always focused on the long term. The short-term pressures can’t be ignored though; it’s going to be very difficult to make money over the coming 12 months. Are the trends we are currently seeing against a background of very low consumer confidence here to stay, or will they change again as optimism returns? I’d love to know the answer.

Global uncertainty

Looking longer term I am very aware that further changes are on the horizon, be that AI, the effects of a changing climate or the aforementioned consumer behavioural trends. Not to mention wars, border disputes and forcible removal of country leaders. There is clearly a great deal of uncertainty in the world.

So how are we ensuring that we are ready for the future? I could talk about how we’ve found opportunities in a contracting market through the deals we did with Davy’s and with Hayward Bros Wines. How we’ve also invested heavily in our website, with new and exciting services for our customers. Equally, I could talk about the strategies we are employing to ensure we continue to have cash in our business to enable us to function and for use as we adapt to the market (measures I am sure many of you are also employing).

However, the underlying plan is that we are looking to do less. Yes, really.

It’s a fine line between being too conservative on one hand and starting to meddle for the sake of it on the other. It’s a quandary that is often in my mind and it’s a balance that I don’t always get right. With that in mind, I am focusing my efforts and those of the senior team on the areas I believe will make the biggest difference to the business as we move through 2026 and beyond. A key part of the plan is the team stopping or reducing work in areas which are not a focus. The aim is that, as a collective, we are less busy and therefore more effective. It will also give us capacity to adapt again as the world moves forward.

Visible results

Our customers will see the results of that focus through the clarity our team members have when they interact with them, and through the products we sell and the services we offer.

I’m proud of our industry. I love working in it and the people I meet are passionate and smart. It’s also changing. It’s adapting and although I think we can all agree that we’ve been dealt a pretty poor hand over the past two years, we are getting on with it.

What we need now is support through stability of government policy – and a government which consults and listens before implementing new policies. While I am advocating for doing less overall, one thing I believe we should collectively be doing more of is engaging with the Wine & Spirit Trade Association’s work to influence government policy.

As an industry, we need to give the WSTA more ammo to help us on this front. In the world of trade associations, numbers count and the more businesses CEO Miles Beale and his team can state they represent, the more ministers will listen. Having used the WSTA fact sheets to write to our MPs before the Budget, we were invited to a roundtable at Westminster. Sam Honey, head of government affairs for the WSTA, accompanied me and the way he spoke in a room of global retailers was seriously impressive.

The WSTA’s online forums and resources regarding subjects such as EPR have also been hugely helpful. It is of course in my interest to encourage you to engage with the WSTA, but I believe it is also in your interests. As an industry, it has never been more important for us to come together to fight our corner.