Brothers open fifth SPAR Store in Hampshire

Brothers Rishi and Darsh Patel have expanded their business with Appleby Westward, the southwest-based SPAR retailer and food wholesaler, with the unveiling of their fifth SPAR store in Hampshire.

The new Chapel Riverside store is close to St. Mary’s Stadium, the home of Southampton F.C., and caters for the convenience grocery essentials of the local community as well as the impulse snacking and food-to-go needs of football supporters on matchdays.

“We acquired the freehold on 3,500 sq.ft. of floor space in a new-build block of flats near the stadium earlier this year,” said Rishi. “We have rented half of it out and developed the other half as a new SPAR store with a mission to provide a quality local convenience service for all.”

The brothers operate four other Hampshire SPAR stores at Bishops Waltham, Twyford near Winchester, Whitenap near Romsey, and Upton near Poole. They also operate eight other stores in the Southampton area under the Premier banner.

“We wanted to streamline the business and Premier could only take us so far, so we moved these under the SPAR fascia just over a year ago,” said Rishi. “We needed range and infrastructure to help us go further and Appleby Westward offered us that. We are currently looking at two other sites to add to our group of SPAR stores later this year.”

A surveyor by trade, Rishi bought his first store shortly after graduating from university. “I worked for a while in the city, but the entrepreneurial spark was always there and Darsh and I have now been running convenience stores together for the last 10 years,” he said. “We are always looking to expand, but always with quality, not simply for the sake of quantity.”