How to plan a retail arbitrage route in the UK

Most sourcing trips are not planned. You pick a shop you know, drive there, then decide where to go next based on what comes to mind. Some days that works. On most days you spend a morning driving past better stores, walking into a convenience format with no clearance, and doubling back across town.

One store is a gamble. A route spreads the risk, because a good stop pays for a quiet one. Here is a simple way to plan a retail arbitrage trip in the UK, by hand or with a tool, and the point where doing it by hand stops working.

What a good day looks like

Here is a real day from our founder's own log, from 3 July 2026. Seven products were logged across four chains, with the first at 10:34 and the last at 12:28:

• Superdrug - Charles Worthington at £2 and Wilkinson Sword at £2.25
• Boots - Tommee Tippee at £8
• Asda - HP ink at £21.90
• Sainsbury's - Fisher-Price at £7.50 and Bioderma at £4.75
• Superdrug again - John Frieda at £2

Notice what is not in that list. Nothing dominated the day. No single store produced most of it, and the buys range from hair care to printer ink. If that morning had been one shop, it would have been one or two products. The route is what made it a day's sourcing.

Step 1: set your time and your end point

Start with the two things that shape everything else. How long have you got, and where do you need to finish? A two-hour window and a three-hour window are different routes, and finishing at home is different from returning to where you started. Decide both first, because the shortest order of stops depends on them.

Step 2: choose stores, not chains

This is where most routes go wrong. A map search for a supermarket returns every branch, and most of them are the wrong kind. Our guide to the best shops for retail arbitrage breaks this down by chain, but the rule is simple: in a supermarket, you want the full-size format. Convenience stores carry very little general merchandise, and that is where non-food clearance comes from.

Mix your chains, too. Four branches of the same supermarket will often carry similar stock. A supermarket, a health and beauty store, a discount chain and a toy shop give you four different chances. Good starting points are our guides to Tesco, Morrisons and Asda.

Step 3: budget time per store

Add a realistic time for each stop, then add the drive. A big supermarket you are walking properly takes longer than a small health and beauty store, and parking at a retail park can take longer than you think. Add a buffer, because a good clearance bay will slow you down, and that is the sort of delay you want.

If the total runs over your window, cut a store. Do not cut the time in each one. Rushing a store is how you miss the bottom shelf.

Step 4: put the stops in the right order

With three stores you can do this in your head. With six, you probably cannot. The number of possible orders grows very quickly, and the order that looks sensible on a map is often not the shortest once you include where you start and finish.

Two things are worth thinking about beyond distance. Put your best store early, while you still have the budget, the energy and the car space. And check opening hours, because some shops close early on Sundays, and some branches do not open at all.

Step 5: decide what you will check in the aisle

A route only pays if you buy the right things. Know your minimum ROI before you leave, and have a way to check a barcode in the aisle. Our guide to Amazon FBA deal analysis covers what to look at, so a good-looking discount does not become a slow seller in your spare room.

Where doing it by hand breaks

You can plan a route in Google Maps, and for three or four stops it is fine. It starts to struggle in three places:

• Finding the right stores - It does not know which branches are convenience formats, or which ones other sellers have had finds in.
• Ordering the stops - You choose the order yourself, or rearrange it by trial and error.
• Long routes - A single Google Maps link can only hold so many stops, and in a phone browser without the Google Maps app it holds fewer.

How retailscout plans a route

This is the problem the retailscout route planner was built for. It covers 17 UK retailers and 13,000+ store locations. You filter by retailer and store size, so convenience formats stay off the list, and you can see what members found at a store before you commit to the drive.

You add the stores you want to a trip, up to 50 stops, set where you start and where you finish, and optimise it for the driving order. You can then open the route in Google Maps a leg at a time, or go stop by stop in Apple Maps or Waze. If you have no plan at all, Randomise builds a route around the time you have.

The short version

Set your time and end point first. Choose full-size stores across a mix of chains. Budget each stop honestly, and cut a store rather than rush one. Put your best stop early, know your numbers before you leave, and go back to the stores that pay, so you learn their patterns. Do that and one quiet shop stops being a wasted day.

retailscout plans profitable sourcing trips and catches retailer price drops between them. It is £14.99 a month for the lot, with a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.