Cornish retailer sees sales soar after refit

The Nisa Local store underwent the re-fit in January, with the entire interior ripped out to enable a complete overhaul, including a contemporary design with new fixtures and fittings, refrigeration and freezers, lighting, flooring, and new services such as a f’real machine.

Batten, said: “I have been wanting to re-fit 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. I was actually thinking about getting rid of the shop last year when Covid came along and then it just went whoosh.

“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.”

The re-fit, which was completed in just nine days, saw the chiller run and the food-to-go area increased in size, both now 50% bigger. Elsewhere, the counter area has been halved, with a till taken out and the self-service checkout (SCO) relocated into the food-to-go area.

Batten added: “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% of our turnover comes via the SCO now.”

He says 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 categories and it is working for us,” Batten added.