Highlights from the ACS 30th anniversary event

The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) this week (8 April) celebrated its 30th anniversary for members and suppliers, co-located at the National Convenience Show 2025.

Highlights included numerous speaker panels, speeches from industry experts and an innovative Ideas Battle between two teams of retailers offering insights into their businesses and ideas for the future of retail.

The ACS had initially planned to celebrate for its 25th anniversary, but as we all know, other priorities took place of this in 2020.

Speaking at the opening of the event, ACS chief executive James Lowman (pictured) spoke on the impact of crime on retailers: “One thing we need more than anything else is action on retail crime. Our 2025 Crime Report describes this problem. You will all know about the scale of retail crime affecting your businesses at the moment and we’re always looking at what works – it might be equipment or store processes.

”But there’s a fundamental that everyone knows works when it comes to tackling crime in their communities - reporting crime every time and investigating it every time. And also identifying prolific repeat offenders and taking them out of the cycle of reoffending with means that are most appropriate to them.

”Putting pressure on the Government is absolutely our primary role.”

”There’s no debate about that being the right approach to take and the Crime & Policing Bill gives the police more powers to implement that. But it all comes down to how they do that now. They have new tools, but how will they use them going forward? We have to be absolutely relentless – at a local level and a national level – to ensure those tools are used much better. The Bill has to be a turning point in tackling these crimes. Putting pressure on the Government is absolutely our primary role.

”But we also want to advise you on how best to use the new legislation. It’s important to us, through our guides, to provide information on how to tackle both those things and this research will continue to be a major thing for us, moving forwards – and another key component of course is engagement.”

As mentioned, the Ideas Battle (main pic) proved one of the most raucous events at the entire week, with retailers including Bobby Singh, Fiona Malone, Amrit Singh and more offering their takes on what works for them and their stores as the industry evolves. The occasion also called on Bobby Singh to rap his vision of his store, which ‘referee’ Chris Noice joked would soon be available on Spotify. 

Elsewhere on one of the panels. Katie Secretan, MD of the newly rebranded Co-op Wholesale, spoke of the importance of data and information from shoppers: “Different types of stores can have very different needs depending on their communities, from forecourts to small village stores. So data and analytics are absolutely key here.

”For us, it’s important that we use that information across the group. And that’s one way we can bring Nisa closer to the newly named Co-op Wholesale, by using data and analytics. We service around 8,000 stores in the UK and have 6.2m customer members of the group.

“Between those two groups of data we can focus in on what’s really important for convenience and make sure we get the format and range right for stores. The world is a tricky place where it can seem a risk to list too much fresh food, for example, so the use of data and analytics is super important to get it right and take the judgement and risk out for our retailers.”

The event was followed by a gala dinner and event later that evening to give thanks to retailers and supporters of the ACS and its conference from across its 30-year lifespan.