The Co-op ramps ups store opening in run up to Christmas

UK convenience retailer The Co-op has opened 30 new stores in the run up to Christmas, focusing on train stations, city centres and residential apartments, with wine proving a central part of the stores’ offer.

The Co-Op store at Clippers Quay, Salford (picture credit: Chris Bull)

The retailer has spent more than £25 million in the thirty new stores that have opened in November and December, with Stuart Hookins, The Co-op’s director of portfolio and development, saying ease, speed and convenience continued to rise in importance for time-pressed shopper.

“Our focus is all about selecting the right location to deliver what our members and customers want, need and care about, conveniently,” he said. “Connecting communities and bringing people together is at the very core of the Co-op, and every time an own-branded product is bought by our members, local community groups receive funding. We continue to look for new sites which support our ambition to operate at the heart of local life and enable us to give back, and create social value in our communities.”

Speaking to the drinks business in October, The Co-op’s BWS boss Simon Cairns said that some of the new urban developments catering for longer-term rentals and more communal living was giving rise to a new style of living, particularly for younger demographic that provided a great opportunity for the The Co-op.

“It’s all about ease, convenience and proximity to the city centre – about having an Uber outside all the time and communal living space. We could be very well-paced within a city centre environment to those shoppers, but we need to think about what they want from that,” he told db.

However, he added that was important that The Co-op didn’t turn its back on its loyal consumer-base at the same time – which and the work to segment and cluster stores was “coming into its own”, having evolved from being approached through a demographic ‘lens’ to one that is more about mission.

“You can genuinely get a food feel for who’s buying what where, and then tailor the range to best suit,” he said. There are clear trends when you look at different stores, the way shoppers use [different] c-stores is very different – a city centre store near a train station is shopped in a very different way to a rural supermarket, where you are basically the hub of the community.”

The former, he said, was more about format size, ready to consume and chilled products, whereas the latter was more about a planned shop.

The retailer had stepped up its ambition for the key week between Christmas and New Year, he said, with a more targeted range that was better suited to consumers, as well as providing better logistics to support its store estate.