There are around 50,000 convenience retailers in the UK, offering everything from fruit and vegetables to homemade curries. This is how they have fought Covid, thieves, the cost-of-living crisis. . .
It’s part of the furnishings of British life. The store around the corner that sells everything: drinks, cigarettes, scratch cards, candy, puppy food and hummus. Those fries you love (Lay’s, not Walkers) with hard-to-understand flavors that you only discover during the holidays. Walk around in your pajamas when you run out of milk in the morning or when you’re desperate for a dose of sugar to relieve a hangover. These outlets are at the center of soap opera drama like Coronation Street and Hollyoaks. In the real world, there are 49,388 convenience retail outlets in the UK, each with its own story.
On a humid Friday afternoon in East London, I’m sitting outside one of those department stores eating a hot vegetarian curry. The giant paneer cubes melt in my mouth and I use thepla (a fluffy Indian flatbread) to cleanse. spinach sauce. That’s the quality of a meal you’d expect to pay more for at a place to eat or a gentrified street food stand. But for me, Londis was only £6.
From the outside, Londis N16 looks like any other convenience store. The store opened its doors through Karsan and Mahalaxmi Patel in 1979, a couple who immigrated to the UK from Zambia. Today, it is run by the next two generations of the Patel family. , who spent his formative years on top of it. Its variety of home-cooked Gujarati dishes has made London an attraction, with fashion bible The Face calling it “the coolest corner store” in the capital.
I discovered Londis N16 on Instagram. The store’s profile is a mix of food images, irreverent captions, and memes. It helps keep its 7,000 subscribers up-to-date on the evolution of the food menu and occasions such as the normal “supper club”. “, the first of these in collaboration with Delli, an app where independent food brands can sell their culinary creations. The account is controlled through Priyesh Patel, 30, the son of store owners Anju and Mayank.
Patel says that combining everything is a family affair: Anju prepares the food in the on-site kitchen while Mayank works in the workshop. His brother, Alpesh, takes care of all the shopping with Jay’s help. a circle of family friends. Patel’s sister-in-law, Neelam, is the patron saint of desserts. Every Tuesday and Friday, visitors can enjoy their freshly made vegetarian curries, hot samosas and cauliflower pakoras, garlic and coriander chutney, as well as fluffy biscuits and fritters with cardamom, pistachio and rose cream.
The decline of convenience retailers like Londis has been predicted for decades, as online grocery shopping has grown alongside giant supermarkets opening smaller retail outlets like Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local. But so far, the industry has defied forecasts, with sales rising sharply. When supermarkets ran out of toilet paper, convenience retailers were among the silent heroes of the pandemic. Today, the cost-of-living crisis has further replaced the dynamic. As inflation drives up costs, those retail establishments are faced with the hard truth that many consumers are forced to prioritize price over convenience. With energy costs also emerging, will the UK branch around the corner be able to survive?
When Patel’s grandparents opened their store in the UK, they had an undeniable philosophy. “They made us realize that we want to be available and offer anything to everyone on the network,” he says. “As a London franchisee, we have the benefits of a chain but the freedom of an independent store. We can grow with the network, because the network is becoming as other people move out.
The buzz around home-cooked food has widened the circle of consumers flocking to the store. “We get people from all walks of life,” Patel says. Locals use the store for the things they want or because they like my mother’s food. That same day, a guy from New York arrived and a friend brought him our food.
James Lowman, chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), says he has heard many stories like this, where there are lines around the block to buy freshly baked samosas and specially prepared Turkish, Lebanese or Polish cold cuts. It’s a triumph of multiculturalism, but it’s also a sign that convenience stores are more applicable than ever. “The convenience sector has consistently grown faster than the grocery market as a whole,” he says.
The number of convenience retail outlets in the UK has risen to almost 1000 in the last 12 months. These range from kiosks and franchises such as Londis to independent greengrocers. The Grocer reports that the overall percentage of food sales at convenience retail establishments increased by a percentage to 23. 4% in 2022, “reducing sales directly from the supermarket sector. “One explanation for why was convenience’s ability to restrict “until shock” (where consumers accidentally spend much more than expected because they buy more parts and don’t keep up with the price) and reduce waste. These retail stores would be expensive to run large weekly errands, but they buy little and can help other people be more effective with what they buy.
Even in tough economic times, Lowman believes other people still want the treats presented through their local store. Guests may not swoon as much during dinner, but small luxuries such as fine drinks and premium chocolate are still allowed.
Quality is an area where convenience retailers can be more competitive compared to supermarkets. Its culmination and vegetables are occasionally locally sourced and fresh. It’s a position where consumers can buy high-end products that supermarkets don’t offer, such as vegan opportunities and foreign foods like baklava.
McCall’s Organics has been serving consumers in one position for 128 years. In the middle of the store, tucked away among locally grown vegetables, seeds, vegan sausage stuffing and new spices, is an original red wheelbarrow that used to ship produce to and from the market position more than a century ago. There’s no other independent shop in Manchester where you can buy the variety and quality that you can buy here,” shop owner Mark McCall, 59, tells me. Ten years ago, he opened another store next door, McCall’s Exotics, to expand his offerings. How did they last so long? He believes this is partly due to the growing tendency of young people to buy food to eat that night. “Younger generations are more susceptible to cooking what they see on TV or on their phones,” he says. “Here you can buy ingredients to cook the cuisine of your choice: Indian, Jamaican, Thai. . . »
Emmy Tokunaga, 32, has been at McCall’s for 3 years. She says consumers have the option to call and order express ingredients that they wouldn’t normally invent. The product offered by the store is updated according to the seasons, but also if consumers request express products. “We know each other” and they’re asking safe things so we can answer them. “The store will also offer a formula to offer discounts to unwavering consumers, as well as boxes of seasonal cocktails. Vegetables that can be bought daily for £10.
It’s this kind of adaptability that has been at the heart of British convenience store history, from greengrocers like McCall’s to the vintage family convenience store. Journalist Babita Sharma, from the 2019 memoir The Corner Shop, grew up living above the apartment. The shops run through their parents in Reading. His mother, Prem, and father, Ved, moved from India to the UK in the late 1960s and opened a shop in 1977. During power outages, his parents sold paraffin wax and kept the store lit. with candles.
Sharma remembers that her parents’ corner store was a place where you could locate all the tensions of the time (racial, political, economic) but also a sense of network and resilience. In the recession of the 1980s, normal consumers simply “turn things on” and pay for them later, when they have the money. “Local outlets can respond so temporarily to the wishes of the network because there is less bureaucracy,” he says. “That’s why they’ve been controlled to continue to succeed in despite so many other crises over the decades. “
What does the future of UK convenience stores look like?Grocery delivery apps have been touted as a top risk to the industry, however, after a series of mergers with Weezy and Gorillas, fast delivery company Getir announced plans to lay off 2,500 people, while its smaller rival, Jiffy, halted deliveries last year. . By comparison, convenience retail establishments have managed to remain applicable by providing a wide diversity of services, from dry cleaning and key sizing to energy bill payment, package pickup, and postal services. “They’re reinventing themselves all the time,” says Sharma. Es like the cat that has nine lives.
Today, those retailers face another challenge: emerging energy prices. Last winter, the UK government introduced an electricity relief scheme for small businesses after the ACS warned that the “urgency” of emerging prices would force thousands of convenience retail outlets to close. Government aid declined in March ahead of the busiest months, but Lowman says this presents very demanding situations for convenience retailers as they consume a lot of energy year-round so they can continue to produce new products and rebrand them fresh in the summer. Now that many outlets are paying double what they did before the sharp rise in energy prices, some would possibly make the decision that their style of business is no longer successful enough to justify long opening hours.
In cities, small local businesses are suffering from the slow advance of urban gentrification. Ali, who works at The Beatles News on Victoria Street in Liverpool, says inflation has affected the influx of people to the store, while rents in the city centre continue to rise. McCall says his premises are at risk from developers, who need to buy the land from the municipality to build apartment buildings. We know we probably won’t be able to help it,” he said. Once we’re gone, there probably won’t be “There’s any other shop like ours in the centre of Manchester, and you don’t know what you’ve been given until it’s over”.
If those outlets had become scarcer, what would we lose?The average convenience store visitor visits 2. 7 times per week, and 36% say they know the other people who paint at their local store pretty well. “There’s a genuine relationship between corporations and their consumers,” Lowman says. There are people who come every day and if they don’t come, they call their loved ones and it turns out they’ve had a fall or something. Tokunaga says two of McCall’s customers have moved overseas, to Australia and Texas, to open similar outlets. They stay in touch. ” Some other people come every day,” he says. “But others leave and come back after years. “
Sharma believes that the enduring legacy of convenience retail establishments brings other cultures together in one space, where other people can eat each other’s food and have small interactions they otherwise wouldn’t have. “Convenience retail establishments were born out of both ‘One and both essences of British culture,'” he says. “They’re the center of a community. “
Perhaps the biggest risk to convenience stores is the dwindling number of people who don’t have jobs there. McCall says that even if his facility wasn’t at risk through developers, none of his sons want to take over the store and continue their 128-year-old business. history, because they’ve seen that he works seven days a week and they want something different.
Being in the middle of a network can also expose staff to crime, racism, and competitive behavior. I spoke to Ravi, 29, who works at Manchester’s mini-market on Oldham Street. The shop is an old British kiosk that has a local charm. Because of its wide variety of bloodless beverages, with any and all hard-to-understand fizzy juice flavors imaginable, from watermelon tango to mojito-flavored 7UP. Local publication The Manc described it as “like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but for pop. “”. Ravi says that almost every day there is a robbery incident: Just yesterday, a guy yelled at him and continued to abuse the staff of the outdoor store once he was physically removed from the premises. It was the incident moment in a week.
Shoplifting has almost doubled in the last six years in the UK. The British Retail Consortium estimates that there were 8 million “theft incidents” in UK retail establishments last year, costing £953 million. This article’s report on the UK shoplifting crisis shows that some shoplifters are using small businesses as a “pantry”. The lasting effect of those incidents goes beyond the monetary cost: Sharma says her recently deceased mother “never forgot” the day a man pulled a knife on her and stole company profits. tomorrow. “Feeling welcome across the network and having someone destroy it in five minutes, that actually stays with you. ” On a stopover in Liverpool, every single convenience store employee I spoke to described theft and disturbances as a daily problem. Lowguy says marketers make a decision that is not the way of life they want. “Theft has a strong private character,” she says. “Some stores and employees are starting to think, ‘I can’t do this anymore. ‘”
For many parents who paint in convenience stores, their dream is for their children to pursue careers beyond this industry. Around 44% of UK convenience store painters are of Asian descent, like Ravi, who moved to Manchester from India. He paints at the convenience store while studying for a master’s degree that he hopes will lead to a career in advertising.
Sharma believes that immigration policy will influence the long term of the corner store more than any other factor. “Recent Poles are taking advantage of the EU’s opportunities,” he says, noting that this may change after Brexit. “As long as the cycle of immigration continues in Britain, I think the corner shop will survive. “
Sitting outside Londis N16, as the faint hum of city life unfolds around us, Patel tells me that his parents never pressured them to continue the shop for another generation. Before the pandemic, he and his brother did their own jobs. : she had recently graduated with a degree in fashion history from Central Saint Martins and painted as a freelance editor while working in pubs; Alpesh disguised himself as an accountant. When Covid hit, they returned to the workshop they grew up in and their roles became more serious and regular. Two years later, young and old are still running together, but each has their own life beyond that. “We work very hard and have a lot of flexibility. That freedom is attractive,” he says. I still don’t know what we’re going to do in the long term, for now I’m satisfied here. “