DCS & Whitworths: Bringing Healthy Snacking to WHS Travel

WHSmith Travel has an unrivaled presence in airports, with stores in every major UK airport, and around 300 million passengers crossing by their stores each year. WHSmith Travel is also a proud partner of the NHS and local trusts, operating stores in over 140 hospitals across the UK. In addition to airports and hospitals, WHSmith Travel has more than 100 rail stores across Mainline and Regional stations with a whopping 1.8 billion people passing through every year.

Sophie Kerrigan - Senior National Account Manager

3 Minutes

/ 26th October 2022

Sales & Distribution

Whitworths are the UK’s Number 1 Brand of Dried Fruit, Nuts and Seeds and have been a key supplier partner of DCS since the summer of 2021. Their mission: to help everyone eat a little healthier every day, using the goodness of nature.

Snacking is an extremely important category for WH Smith Travel, with up to around half of all baskets containing a snacking product across their different Travel store formats. So, it goes without saying that DCS and Whitworths were excited to partner with them for their 2022 Snacking Range Review and “Biggest Ever Summer in Travel” initiative.

Working alongside Snacking Buyer, Matt Lewis, we launched a new range of HFSS-compliant Whitworths Shots into the Air and Rail stores, space previously dominated by other big names within Healthy Snacking, such as Graze and Fulfil. As well as Shots, our CQUIN-compliant Dried Fruit and Nut Snack Packs launched across a selection of their Hospital locations, which you’ll find at Till-point. This Autumn, Whitworths’ latest NPD in Kid’s Snacking, Sunny Raisins Snack Packs, will hit shelves across selected stores – look out for us in the QMS!

As part of our agreement, Whitworths have had the opportunity to offer in-store sampling at 3 of the key rail stores – Victoria, Euston and Liverpool Street, meeting with and converting commuters to Shots consumers.

In addition to branded security gates, digital screens and window posters, our piece de resistance has undoubtedly been the Heathrow Terminal 5 Digital Fascia activation. Matt explains, “In the stores that had Digital activation, including the Heathrow T5 Fascia, we saw a significant increase in the volume of Whitworths lines sold over this time period vs 4 weeks prior”. He continues “Our digital assets not only deliver incremental volume but also deliver really strong reach. For example, the Heathrow T5 Fascia reaches over 1.5m people per week”.