An urgent overhaul is under way at Coles Liquor Group, but one of its top executives says it is too difficult to say when that will lift performance to acceptable levels.
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Thinus Keeve, the general manager of liquor operations at Coles Liquor Group who reports directly to the newly appointed head of liquor at Coles, Greg Davis, says there is a substantial amount of work required on the division.
"All three of them are getting attention," he said.
The big-box superstores of First Choice are considered by analysts to be the most troubled of the Coles liquor brands, which also include Liquorland and the more upmarket Vintage Cellars.
Mr Keeve said reinvigorating Coles Liquor was a priority that has been set out by John Durkan, who took over as the head of the entire Coles operation from Ian McLeod.
"It is urgent," Mr Keeve said. But exactly when they will be performing solidly he can't predict. "I can't say," he said.
Specialised management teams have been established for each of the brands and a centralised structure removed.
Mr Keeve was speaking after giving a presentation at a Wine Outlook conference in Adelaide in which he told the audience that the overarching premise of the overhaul of Coles Liquor Group was to drive more foot traffic into the stores and lift the frequency of transactions.
"It is going to be a transaction-led transformation," he said.
The underperformance of the Coles liquor business has been a source of frustration for Coles' owner Wesfarmers for several years, considering the supermarkets business has made strong advances against rival Woolworths since Coles Group was acquired in a $19 billion takeover in 2007.
But Woolworths' liquor operations led by Dan Murphy's and BWS have shown faster growth rates.
At the same conference on Wednesday, Woolworths Liquor Group general manager of merchandising Rose Scott defended the group's negotiating approach with suppliers to ensure keen pricing on shelves, saying that customers would simply walk out if they can find the items cheaper elsewhere.
"They will walk out of our stores if it's not the right price," she said.
Ms Scott also said retailers had a different mindset to suppliers, and were focused on how much wine had sold in the past 30 minutes in stores, whereas wine suppliers might be focusing on their own weekly or monthly sales.
"It's just different time horizons and perspectives that we have," she said.
