Former marketing executive Nicole Compen is so committed to shining a light on emerging food, drink and wellness brands that she called her London-based pop-up grocery concept Raye The Store to ingrain that purpose in it.
“It refers to a ray of sunshine. I was constantly following brands on Instagram, but couldn’t find them in physical stores around London,” she says. “I decided to launch Raye with the aim to generate exposure for new and up-and-coming brands and help them in their journey to scale and become bigger.”
Five Raye pop-ups have run for four to six weeks in different London spots, from quieter residential areas such as Chelsea to highly trafficked shopping destinations such as Covent Garden. The temporary stores have ranged in size between 600 and 1,300 square feet.
Four Raye pop-ups are planned for this year in Central London locations. Compen says the relatively low-risk pop-up model allows her to try various locations reaching distinct customer groups to determine what works best for them and where to settle into a permanent location in 2024. Compen has learned, for instance, that Chelsea shoppers are big on CBD oils, but they fall flat in Covent Garden, where tourists don’t pick them up.
Raye pop-ups offer around 300 food, drink and wellness products from 70 to 100 brands largely based in the United Kingdom and Europe more generally. The three categories are evenly represented in terms of the number of brands. However, only three brands per product subcategory like supplements or skincare are on shelf to keep the curation tight. Each brand is allocated sufficient space to house up to six products.
“We try to stay as minimal as possible,” says Compen. “From a brand point of view, they get the opportunity to stand out and not sit next to too many competitors like they would in a Space NK, for example. It’s a challenge for young brands to be noticed otherwise.”
Compen opened the first Raye pop-up store in East London for 10 days in late 2020 to see if it had legs. She discovered it does have legs and decided to quit her full-time job to focus on the business. She says, “I jumped in the deep, which was scary, but it has paid off given that we’ve launched five stores to date.”
Wellness is the latest product vertical to join Raye’s assortment after Compen started receiving a strong volume of inbounds from supplement and protein powder brands. Now, its wellness assortment encompasses a wide breadth of offerings spanning skincare, bath and body care, haircare, CBD products, supplements, ingestibles and incense.
Brands in the assortment include Spruce, Casa Cura, Wype, Bubbl&Co, Glaize, Dirtea, Manifesto, Sood, Aire, Deja, Clen, JetFuel Supplements, Rhythm Nutrition, Hanx and Kib. Wellness accounts for 20% to 30% of Raye’s business.
Plant-based protein powders and mushroom-derived supplements and powders have been hot wellness products at Raye. Other bestselling wellness products are AWKN’s Hangover Prevention Supplement, Melora’s Manuka Honey Lozenges, House of Roxy’s Shroom Mood Latte, HUX’s Hydration Tablets, and AKT London’s Halcyon Summers Deodorant.
The typical Raye shopper is a 24- to 40-year-old female professional. Wellness products at Raye are primarily under 25 pounds or about $30 at the current exchange rate. Travel- or trial-size products are featured to encourage experimentation. Compen says, “This is the best way to initially engage with consumers who don’t know your brand.”
While experiential grocers aren’t a novel phenomenon in London, Compen considers Raye uniquely well-positioned for urban consumers increasingly accustomed to shopping for snacks and supplements beyond supermarkets and health and wellness retailers such as Holland & Barrett. She points out that concept stores like fashion retailer Arket and interior design outlet The Conran Shop also selling food and beauty products, respectively, are indicative of that consumer behavior.
“People are looking out for experiences,” says Compen. “That’s where having that physical presence for online brands gets exciting.”
Despite ranking as the fifth largest wellness economy in the world, according to the Global Wellness Institute, many shoppers in the United Kingdom are perplexed by wellness when they come into Raye pop-ups and often ask store associates what the term means. Compen views wellness in a broad manner bridging internal and external products.
“It’s challenging because it means something different to everyone,” she says. “There’s definitely a generational difference though. Teenagers have come in asking for products with rosemary water for their hair because they saw something on TikTok, for example. We carried sexual wellness products in our last store and that pushes even further into the category beyond just taking care of your skin or your hair.”
Inside Raye pop-ups, shoppers can get information from placement cards displayed adjacent to brands’ merchandise. Compen believes in the importance of holding in-store educational events with founders to provide further information and aid consumers with their wellness shopping. She says, “We have every brand come in for sampling sessions so they can connect with customers, tell their brand stories and communicate the benefits of their products.”
Most of the brands at Raye are vegan and plant-driven, but Compen is still nailing down its key mission pillars. At the moment, she concentrates on connecting with founders’ stories in assessing whether to carry a brand or not. She mentions the skincare brand By Sarah London has a compelling story that hooked her.
“It was founded by two sisters. One of them was very ill and had to go through various chemo treatments, which had an effect on her skin,” recounts Compen. “They started developing products that she needed, and they launched the brand initially online.”
By Sarah London, which is available at Sephora and Superdrug in the U.K., entered a Raye’s pop-up last year to test two new products. Skincare brand Plenaire and diffuser brand Ripple+, both of which are stocked at larger retailers like Space NK, Nordstrom, Credo and Superdrug, have tested products at Raye, too.
Larger retailers have taken notice of Raye, and buyers from them regularly stop by its pop-ups to browse the latest and greatest from nascent brands. “They see that we constantly are at the forefront of the next new thing and that brands literally launch with us as they come to market,” says Compen. “That’s what they want.”
Placing Raye installations inside larger retailers is on Compen’s radar. She envisions it possibly popping up at the likes of Space NK, Superdrug, Selfridges, Whole Foods, Planet Organic and Sainsbury’s. Distribution at hotels, eateries and festivals is on Compen’s radar, too. Outside of the U.K., she’s been in communication with third-party companies in the Netherlands that support food and wellness startups in the hopes of establishing a Raye presence there.
Launching e-commerce is on the future roadmap as well, but Compen isn’t in a huge rush to jump into e-commerce because she’s cautious about refining Raye’s approach to online selling. She says, “I don’t want to be a marketplace, so we are figuring out ways that we can bring the experience that we have offline, which is more focused on telling brand stories, to an online space.”
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