Forget Flavourburst, branded Sixty60 jumpsuits, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, or even FreshX or ‘The Market’ store formats.
Forget about long-term exclusive lease agreements with landlords, which will all but disappear at the end of this year after an investigation by competition authorities.
Also, mostly over is the aggressive land grab in the titanic battle as Checkers took aim squarely at Woolworths Food’s long-held dominance at the affluent end of the market. There are only so many more ‘white space’ opportunities to be had.
In recent years, the war has shifted to delivering (and protecting) a differentiated offering, which means unique products and services (such as concessions like Starbucks) in store.
This will translate into more baskets, more trolleys and more deliveries, more often.
The cross-shop by customers across the two brands (and others, like Pick n Pay and sometimes Spar) is real.
In the tussle between Checkers and Woolies, the addition of the former by Discovery Vitality as a HealthyFood partner has deepened this cross-shop, given the size of that engaged base.
The need to stand out
For consumers, this race to differentiate has meant a far greater variety of products and options in the stores themselves.
Woolies has extended Flavourburst – ‘No other fruit has quite the same juiciness and flavour’ – from the original soft citrus across most of its fresh fruit line, as an example. It has also been very smart in finding opportunities to extend this into adjacent categories (in season, it has special Ayrshire yoghurt with Flavourburst blueberries).
The best possible example is the most iconic Woolies product of them all, Chuckles. It is canonical. This registered trademark, no less, defines what Woolies is.
It has extended this brand from the ‘humble’ chocolate-covered malted puff into every confectionary product conceivable and then further into ice creams, biscuits, milkshakes, hot chocolate power and even body butter (which was perhaps a stretch too far, given that it has been delisted).
Relative ‘exclusivity’
Adding all these variations of products may seem trivial, but it’s an immensely complicated process, especially when it comes to fresh produce.
These supermarket groups find and work with these growers exclusively. The Shoprite group has not been left behind, with its Freshmark arm procuring varietals such as pink lemons, finger limes, The Alizza Fruit (a seedless pomelo-mandarin hybrid) and now, in 2026, the Onix citrus (from Spain).
For the rest of their sourcing, both groups (and competitors) have to work with third-party suppliers to produce these differentiated products.
More often than not, these arrangements are exclusive as one retailer wouldn’t exactly want their rival to be supplied from the same factory.
The collapse of Beyers into liquidation recently has highlighted how difficult it is, both for suppliers and retailers, to thread this needle.
The story, first reported by the Financial Mail, is clearly a nuanced one. Still, few outside of founder Kees Beyers and Woolies management would know exactly what transpired, when, and what was (and wasn’t) included in various contractual agreements.
Woolworths wasn’t Beyers’s only customer, but it was its largest (around half of turnover at the peak). It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Woolworths would’ve heard about that second factory being for sale before Beyers acquired it. By this point, however, Woolies would’ve seen the threat as close to existential.
Beyers would’ve pointed to the two separate factories and the different “shapes, fillings and formulations”, basically asking its largest customer to ‘just trust us’.
But this is not how manufacturing works. If the one production line was having trouble with taste or consistency or yield, what’s to say a more experienced plant engineer or food technologist from the other site wouldn’t be roped in to help solve the problem?
Woolworths operated extremely rationally once Beyers confirmed that it had acquired a second site, with other customers (including its rivals). It needed to completely derisk the threat to its business.
What if a Chuckles look-and-taste-a-like product suddenly appeared on Checkers shelves?
Woolies hedges its bets
To solve the problem, it roped in one of its other key suppliers and began work on hedging its production bets.
The reduction in Woolies’s Chuckles orders from Beyers (R100 million at first, followed by R100 million a few months later) wasn’t supply that was simply sucked out of the market. Shelves were still fully stocked.
At the same time, Premier was ramping up production of Chuckles for Woolworths.
Its confectionary business was already producing jellies and gums for the retailer and had been steadily expanding that number of products. Chocolate items (including Chuckles) were added, along with liquorice.
Premier already makes the popular Manhattan brand and acquired Mister Sweet in 2021 (it operates across two sites in Gauteng). Premier is able to continue running these brands while still manufacturing exclusive products for Woolies – one can imagine just how tight that contract is.
Premier would never risk this lucrative business; more so after it acquired RFG earlier this year. For both businesses, Woolworths is a key customer (RFG produces dairy, ready meals, pies and pastries for the retailer).
Ready meals
You can be certain that the suppliers producing ready-to-eat meals for Woolies are not doing the same for Checkers (and vice versa).
The entire premise of Woolies is centred on fresh and convenience – this is what it will fight tooth and nail to defend (the convenience assortment at Checkers remains rather more limited).
Woolworths’s acquisition of in2food, a strategic supplier of ready meals to its supermarkets, seemed logical enough.
After all, Woolies is in2food’s largest customer (by a country mile, Moneyweb understands).
You can trust, however, that Woolworths did not really want to enter the manufacturing business. Running a factory where you are the most significant customer becomes quite complex. What margins will you agree on? What does a retailer know, really, about running a food manufacturer?
What Woolworths absolutely couldn’t afford to happen was having a rival, say the Shoprite Group (‘hypothetically’), snapping in2food up from its private equity owners who, obviously, have been looking to exit.
Just the beginning …
Expect many more of these situations in the coming years.
Woolworths Food is deliberately not vertically integrated. It relies on contracts with manufacturers. Until now, it hadn’t owned one.
Over time, Shoprite may also find itself in a situation where it would rather snap up a manufacturing business in order to defend or add a product line than let it pass by.
One could easily see a situation where it works with an existing supplier to acquire some (all?) of the Beyers assets (it is really doubtful that the group itself would buy this outright).
Moneyweb understands, though, that there are already a number of parties interested in those assets.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
