Yep our guys do that. The use a company called Cook!
Village shop
- Thread starter sh1kar
- Start date
Cumbrian 1
Well-Known Member
Can you actually park easily and free by the shop? Parking can be a killer I’ve seen many a secondary shopping parade fail because of this as people can easily park in out of town retail parks.
Last edited:
Yes but realistically only about 4 cars at a time, hence going to offer a delivery service
Cumbrian 1
Well-Known Member
Every food retailer offers delivery, what your village shop needs a USP that others can’t deliver (no pun intended), delivery within 30 mins?
I lived in a village where the shop was open until 7pm. This was great and I used it a lot. Our village shop is now only open until 5pm, so much less useful. There is a supermarket 8 miles away, so we end up going there in the evenings, when we would have gone to the shop, as it was handy.
I used to go to a village shop that was literally open all the time and sold absolutely everything, even Roquefort cheese. I suspect it was a labour of love though and the new owners only open in the summer to sell essentials to holiday makers.
I think it must be very hard to make a living in any village shop though and there are a lot that are really badly run. I waiting to be served in one last week and was asked to leave and come back as they were too busy and about to close for lunch. I went back later and the staff were so rude, I will not visit again.
There is another local shop near me that does exceptionally good pies and they attract a huge amount of custom from miles around, to the extent that half the village is blocked up every lunchtime. They just get a local butcher to make them.
I used to go to a village shop that was literally open all the time and sold absolutely everything, even Roquefort cheese. I suspect it was a labour of love though and the new owners only open in the summer to sell essentials to holiday makers.
I think it must be very hard to make a living in any village shop though and there are a lot that are really badly run. I waiting to be served in one last week and was asked to leave and come back as they were too busy and about to close for lunch. I went back later and the staff were so rude, I will not visit again.
There is another local shop near me that does exceptionally good pies and they attract a huge amount of custom from miles around, to the extent that half the village is blocked up every lunchtime. They just get a local butcher to make them.
The curry pies are very popular, but lasagne pies and a cheeseburger in a pie are also good!
we have a visiting chippy in village hall car park
This probably has little to do with parking, services offered or any other spurious reason you are trying to find to explain the downturn and difficulty in trading.
Unless your village is immune to the financial landscape out there or everybody who lives in your village is called "Sheikh" then I think it is fair to say that a lack of money is the cause of most current issues.
Either people have literally no money or what they do have is being spent in a wiser way than on the generally high prices seen in most rural village stores.
Our village has a potential direct custom base of 1000 and probably the same again from the nearby surrounding villages. We are however literally a 20-25 mile round trip from either Stratford or Banbury. There is nothing inbetween, so you either wait till the next time you are at Tesco, you go without or you use the village shop. If your shop is within a 4 mile radius of cheaper shops, you will struggle.
The shop seems to do ok. There is tons of parking, as in you can park at least 20 cars on the street either side, in front of the village hall and other places, and walk no more than 40yds to the shop. They sell the usual stuff along with basic hardware. They sell local produce like fresh baked bread and pastries and also stuff like black pudding scotch eggs and game sausage rolls and nice things like that. They never seem to hang around long and very rarely is there bread left at the end of each day. They have over the years tried stuff like refillable detergents, refill wines and weird stuff like that. I don't think it has worked really. Their bread and butter is the usual stuff and people getting the munchies and wanting alcohol before the shop closes.
They do not pander to customers and have strict opening times. 9am-7pm Mon-Sat and 9.30am-5pm Sunday. Closed bank hols and there is never any sort of deviation away from this. Customers know when it is open. They therefore go there before they have an opportunity to have a drink after dinner or get comfy on the sofa when the chance is higher that their intended shopping trip would not materialise. I personally think late opening hours for small villages with no throughfare footfall is a waste of staff wage and utility cost. No point paying for all that outlay to sell a copy of farmers weekly and a couple of packs of M&M's.
Cash cows are there to be milked. Stick to the basics and do not get caught up in dry cleaning, coffee shops etc. Jeez, our lot have tried that and they are forever opening and closing down again. Even harder now with nobody having any money.
On that subject, villages can seem really middle class. I mean you have some people without a pot to **** in and also some folk who are minted but generally you have people who appear to be doing ok without being wealthy. I think a larger portion of those people are struggling more than we might think. Watch how much people are putting in their tanks at fuel stations. It is scary to see people putting fivers and tenners worth of fuel in to £45k Mercs and similar. I have seen lots of this recently. Folk are hugely over leveraged from a financial point of view and will still be coming to terms with how to afford the winter fuel bills. Nothing is going down, everything is going up and pay is not keeping up. You then have people suffering increasing rents and possibly nearing end of fixed mortgage terms. These are all lagging indicators which are in the pipeline to really show up anytime from now until the end of this year. The worst is to come. With food inflation being reported close to 20% from this time last year still, rates will almost certainly go up further.
I went in to my local the other day to get a small bottle of fairy liquid, a courgette, bottle of pepsi and a loaf of fresh bread. I got some pence back from a tenner. I sat at home drinking a smaller glass of Woodford than usual thinking about it. I am not on the breadline, have no dependants, have not suffered rental increases and have had generally decent pay rises over the last coupla years. I am still feeling it though and am not able to save what I used to. Lots of people have never been able to save. Now they are totally broke. They aint visiting a village shop to pay a tenner for some clingfilm, half a dozen eggs and a pizza.
Life is tough right now. Shops will need to be run with scary efficiency and every possible cut available passed on to people to entice then to shop and continue turnover. Nobody in their right mind is dry cleaning stuff at the moment or paying extra for deliveries from a village shop and stuff like that. They want what they need at the lowest price possible. Something most village shops literally cannot afford to do.
Unless your village is immune to the financial landscape out there or everybody who lives in your village is called "Sheikh" then I think it is fair to say that a lack of money is the cause of most current issues.
Either people have literally no money or what they do have is being spent in a wiser way than on the generally high prices seen in most rural village stores.
Our village has a potential direct custom base of 1000 and probably the same again from the nearby surrounding villages. We are however literally a 20-25 mile round trip from either Stratford or Banbury. There is nothing inbetween, so you either wait till the next time you are at Tesco, you go without or you use the village shop. If your shop is within a 4 mile radius of cheaper shops, you will struggle.
The shop seems to do ok. There is tons of parking, as in you can park at least 20 cars on the street either side, in front of the village hall and other places, and walk no more than 40yds to the shop. They sell the usual stuff along with basic hardware. They sell local produce like fresh baked bread and pastries and also stuff like black pudding scotch eggs and game sausage rolls and nice things like that. They never seem to hang around long and very rarely is there bread left at the end of each day. They have over the years tried stuff like refillable detergents, refill wines and weird stuff like that. I don't think it has worked really. Their bread and butter is the usual stuff and people getting the munchies and wanting alcohol before the shop closes.
They do not pander to customers and have strict opening times. 9am-7pm Mon-Sat and 9.30am-5pm Sunday. Closed bank hols and there is never any sort of deviation away from this. Customers know when it is open. They therefore go there before they have an opportunity to have a drink after dinner or get comfy on the sofa when the chance is higher that their intended shopping trip would not materialise. I personally think late opening hours for small villages with no throughfare footfall is a waste of staff wage and utility cost. No point paying for all that outlay to sell a copy of farmers weekly and a couple of packs of M&M's.
Cash cows are there to be milked. Stick to the basics and do not get caught up in dry cleaning, coffee shops etc. Jeez, our lot have tried that and they are forever opening and closing down again. Even harder now with nobody having any money.
On that subject, villages can seem really middle class. I mean you have some people without a pot to **** in and also some folk who are minted but generally you have people who appear to be doing ok without being wealthy. I think a larger portion of those people are struggling more than we might think. Watch how much people are putting in their tanks at fuel stations. It is scary to see people putting fivers and tenners worth of fuel in to £45k Mercs and similar. I have seen lots of this recently. Folk are hugely over leveraged from a financial point of view and will still be coming to terms with how to afford the winter fuel bills. Nothing is going down, everything is going up and pay is not keeping up. You then have people suffering increasing rents and possibly nearing end of fixed mortgage terms. These are all lagging indicators which are in the pipeline to really show up anytime from now until the end of this year. The worst is to come. With food inflation being reported close to 20% from this time last year still, rates will almost certainly go up further.
I went in to my local the other day to get a small bottle of fairy liquid, a courgette, bottle of pepsi and a loaf of fresh bread. I got some pence back from a tenner. I sat at home drinking a smaller glass of Woodford than usual thinking about it. I am not on the breadline, have no dependants, have not suffered rental increases and have had generally decent pay rises over the last coupla years. I am still feeling it though and am not able to save what I used to. Lots of people have never been able to save. Now they are totally broke. They aint visiting a village shop to pay a tenner for some clingfilm, half a dozen eggs and a pizza.
Life is tough right now. Shops will need to be run with scary efficiency and every possible cut available passed on to people to entice then to shop and continue turnover. Nobody in their right mind is dry cleaning stuff at the moment or paying extra for deliveries from a village shop and stuff like that. They want what they need at the lowest price possible. Something most village shops literally cannot afford to do.
Another thing to consider is the alternative fuel payment and if folk in your village are entitled to that if they are not on a natural gas supply. I wasn't aware of this and today a cheque turned up from my electricity supplier for £200 saying that I should be given help because I must use an alternative source of energy to heat my home. The fact I don't actually heat my home is neither here nor there. They sent me £200 anyway but I understand some suppliers are not automatically doing this. If your village is not on mains gas, tell everyone in case they could be due a coupla hundred quid, some of which might find its way to the village shop when people want a bottle of wine to celebrate
I think that hits the nail on the head here too
Overlay
Well-Known Member
Good gear as well I get them food packs from cooks for 4 days at a pop not the cheapest but very good
Here’s our village shop - community run. I’m sure a phone call to explain how it works would be welcomed. I should add it is part of the community owned village pub.
There are quite a few bolt-on businesses they could do. There's an utility price matching business, group buying of e.g.heat8ngoil, parcel and delivery handling, Keynest (keyholding for people and holiday cottages), and various other things where they act as a delivery of collection centre...e.g. drycleaning etc.
I think the point is that acting as a collection/drop off point for parcels is less about the fees for that work (although i am sure it can help if there is sufficient demand) but about increasing footfall. We live in a semi rural area and use local small shops for dropping off returns to amazon and the like. We dont always buy something when we drop things off, but we do sometimes. Without footfall everything else is arguably a waste of time.
devon deer stalker
Well-Known Member
My friend (he rarely posts on here anymore) bought a shop and post office in a small village, he does deliveries, he also butchers and sells his own venison, gets a pizza van visiting, it all adds up to make it viable, just.
During Covid they loved his shop, but then moved back to the super markets, he went on social media, 'use it or lose it', and it helped.
What also helped was they work their backsides off.
