The award for Best Independent Retailer recognizes an entrepreneur who has built a successful Convenience business. Offering a wide range of products, the winner will need to be an outstanding Convenience store which has seen spectacular results in both turnover and customer numbers.

The Spirit of the Community Award will reward a store which is truly at the heart of its community. The winning store will need to go beyond the call of duty to help customers and the neighborhood.

The Best Impulse Retailer Award is for a shop which is exceptionally well merchandised and ensures all its ranges are immaculately displayed for maximum impact. The winner will provide outstanding customer service, offer promotions that are well executed with strong price points and will create excellent in-store theatre.

A new category that celebrates the fantastic offerings of the symbol groups and the way in which independent retailers can find a niche and great prosperity with them. The symbol group sector is dynamic and constantly evolving, and the winner will be a retailer who has used the advantages of membership to the full and with flair and originality.

Maybe you bake on site, maybe you don’t – it’s the offering and range that counts for this award. The Best Bakery Retailer Award is for a store with the most beguiling bakery offering. The smell of freshly baked goods tempts customers into a shop, so getting the bakery range right lifts your business overall.

This award recognizes the fast-paced nature of current developments in the Convenience sector, and identifies the innovators who have adapted best to the changing tastes and needs of their customers with delicious ready-to-eat foods and meals – as stores in the sector evolve into a multi-service community hubs.

The pioneer generation of UK Convenience is now at or beyond retirement age, but their love of independent retail, their skill as merchandisers and their importance community figures, are often manifested in their daughters and sons who have carried on the in the trade. This award honors those who have best managed to prove that successful independent retail is indeed a family business with continuity across the generations.

This award recognizes how one of the major elements of independents’ revenue – tobacco sales – is threatened by ever-increasing prices, regulation and restrictions. The profitable and healthier vape, nic pouch and heat-not-burn alternatives are now being adopted by nimble, enterprising store-owners who also educate their customers about vaping.

The Asian Trader Best Wholesale Depot Award rewards the wholesale depot which best meets the needs of its customers. Operating in a highly competitive market, wholesalers have to work hard and with passion to increase their turnover and customer base.

This is another new award that has been added to take stock of and celebrate the maturing of the convenience sector, as more and more impulse entrepreneurs expand into multiple sites and establish themselves as true convenience chains. The past year has seen local shopping assume a greater importance than ever before, making the prospects for the development of chain convenience very attractive.

“Above and beyond the call of duty” is a phrase that has characterized the independent grocery sector during the period of Covid-2, as retailers came to the rescue of their locked -down and vulnerable communities. The ongoing challenge for our local heroes will be supporting their community as we enter a period of food and heating poverty, together with inflation.

This is for the retailer who has excellently served their smoking customers despite regulatory obstructions including bans on merchandising and advertising, plain packs and ever-higher taxes. Smoking is not illegal and still provides pleasure for millions of people. Keeping them informed of range and offers, and ensuring supply, availability and good advice, is a paramount duty and skill of a fine storeowner.

This category reflects the immense contribution to the channel made by the beer, wine and spirits sector, its increasing development a part of the convenience offer, and a focus of innovation and entrepreneurship amongst independent storeowners. It is awarded to the retailer whose alcohol offering has either improved the most in range sales , been the most imaginative or has in some other way made a store really stand out and attract new customers.

This new and prestigious award for Businesswoman of the Year acknowledges that despite considerable advances in making the sexes equal in the sphere of work, it still takes extra creativity, grit and integrity to succeed as a woman in the face of ingrained attitudes that resist reform. Such an achievement deserves special recognition.

This award is for a retailer who has demonstrated excellent adherence to legal and regulatory guidelines including the restricted sale of age-related products and working with authorities and their community to combat illicit trade in their area as well as a commitment to social responsibility and the environment.

Judges will be looking for evidence initiatives which show a robust age verification programmer; co-operation with local authorities to restrict illicit sales; initiatives and measures, both instore and in the community, which reduces their carbon footprint and promotes sustainability in their community.