Artisan craft bakery Winnie’s has been using bluetooth technology in a fresh bid to target nearby consumers.
The bakery, based in Meadow Street, Weston-super-Mare, started trialling the technology as part of its marketing campaign, by alerting con- sumers with messages of special offers in-store.
Bluetooth wireless technology allows data to be sent to mobile phones in the vicinity. However, a Greggs shop in Regent Street, based across the road from Winnie’s, caught wind of the scheme and started promoting its own sausage rolls right outside Winnie’s shop.
Winnie’s owner Jeremy Chamberlain said it started trialling bluetooth in January and, by the Easter holidays, its messages were getting picked up by a number of tourists as well as its core customer base. "We didn’t spend thousands of pounds on it. You can put a bluetooth server on your computer, create a message and anyone who has their bluetooth on in the area gets offered the message. If they accept it, the special offer pops up on their mobile," he explained.
The bakery sends out around 100 messages a day, around 60-65 of which are accepted by consumers, which has followed through to around 5-10 people coming into the shop "waving their phones", said Chamberlain. "We’ve had quite a good response. We’ve been experimenting a lot, trying to create offers that actually work."
The Greggs outlet in Regent Street declined to comment.
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