The Co-operative Group has launched a mobile top-up shop that will act as a temporary store when one of its shops is being refurbished. 

The four-metre by 2.3-metre kiosk will stock 120 of the society’s most popular products and will help it serve customers while the 340 ‘generation two’ stores it plans to refit this year are closed (sometimes for as long as 14 days). 

Temporary stores are not unusual in grocery, but they are when they have wheels. Temporary stores of the more static variety include one by Morrisons in 2010 when its Penrith supermarket was destroyed by a fire. Midlands Co-op (now Central England Co-op) did the same in 2009 at its Oakham store. Both chose to operate from marquees in the store’s car park. 

Waitrose is also currently trading from a temporary store in Dorking, Surrey, while its store in the town is being extensively expanded and refurbished. 

Retailers who have gone for a more mobile version include Asda, which in March last year launched the ‘Asda Anywhere’ shop –a pop-up shop that’s basically a PoS display and checkout on wheels. 

The Co-op has done it before too – it used to run mobile vans in the 1950s and more recently has tried mobile versions to take to food shows. 

On today’s move, The Co-op Group’s head of retail Steve Murrells says The Co-op is “taking convenience shopping back to the future”, and describes the kiosk as “a modern day twist on the old style mobile grocery vans”. 

The society could even look at “other possible options for portable convenience shopping”, he adds. “This could point to a new way of convenience shopping in the future.” 

But you can’t help thinking why the Co-op has taken so long to launch this. 

With group debts of £1.4bn, the society needs to maximise every sales opportunity, so not trading from a site for up to 14 days - even if like-for-like sales increase by double digits when the store reopens again – is something the Co-op can’t afford to do. 

The kiosk may be small, but it’s a big opportunity, both to boost sales and enhance its reputation as a community retailer. 

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