Cornish retailer, who thought of closing, invests in store after Covid-19 sales spike

A full refurbishment of a Cornish convenience store has resulted in an initial sales uplift of 15 per cent.

The Nisa Local store in St Stephen underwent the refit in January with the entire interior of the store ripped out to enable a complete overhaul of the property.

“I have been wanting to refit St Stephen for a long, long time but we have a Co-op literally just down the road from us that is twice the size and I was concerned that we simply wouldn’t be able to compete,” store owner Gary Batten said.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the realities for him.

“I was actually thinking about getting rid of the shop last year when Covid came along and then it just went whoosh,” he said. “Our weekly turnover doubled immediately in that first week. And while the sales spiked and have now returned to more normal levels, we are still tracking ahead of pre-Covid.”

Profits from the extraordinarily busy period in the early stages of the pandemic were ploughed straight back into the business to finance the refit.

The store now boasts a contemporary design with new fixtures and fittings, refrigeration and freezers, lighting, flooring and new services including the installation of a f’real machine.

“We decided to gut the entire store, ripped everything out and started again. We had a blank canvas and have given the store a brilliant new look,” Batten said.

The refit, which was completed in the space of just nine days, saw the chiller run and the food to go area increased in size, both now 50 per cent bigger, allowing him to dramatically expand the hot food to go range. Elsewhere, the counter area has been halved, with a till taken out and the self-service checkout relocated into the food to go area.

“We found that people coming in for food to go were having to queue down the aisle to get to the main counter to pay for their hot food. Now they can walk in, go straight to the food to go and use the SCO. It’s a faster and more efficient service for them and almost 20 per cent of our turnover comes via the SCO now,” he said

The shop standards are also much improved with better use of POS and SELs and a new layout that provides an easier route for shoppers to follow round the store.

“We wanted to make the shop fit for the future and I think we have achieved that. We have gone for a full Co-op range, which I was a little concerned about initially, but we have used the Nisa planograms across all categoriesand it is working for us.”