EasyFoodstore, the first venture of EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou into discount groceries, is looking to expand its solitary store.
EasyGroup director of communications Richard Shackleton told The Grocer this week that architect plans had been drawn up to expand the 750 sq ft store, in Park Royal, North West London, as it continues to test and tweak its proposition before deciding whether to roll the concept out further.
The store is located in an EasyBus depot and Shackleton said the idea would be to knock through to the bus company offices next door, with those shifting upstairs.
However he added that the timeframe for this work to commence had not yet been confirmed.
Last week, EasyFood made customer parking at the store available for the first time. The car park, also part of the bus company site, has capacity for 30 cars.
“Customers were telling us that they love our great cheap food and liked to stock up on the 10 units of almost every line,” explained Shackleton. “But getting it home on the bus was a bit of a nightmare.”
The store has also extended its opening times for one extra hour in the morning and is now trading daily between 10am and 5pm. Shackleton said its customer demographic had shown that for reasons such as unemployment, retirement or zero hours contracts they would mainly be at home during the day. Therefore these were the best hours to suit their needs and so it wouldn’t be looking to open early in the morning or in the evening.
The store currently has a range of around 50 ambient store cupboard products and frozen lines, which are all priced at just 25p. Shackleton said it had recently added more carbohydrate products and was hoping to add household goods but was struggling to find a supplier that could meet its price point. Shackleton cited the cheapest laundry detergent elsewhere as selling for around £1.
EasyFood sources much of its products from wholesalers Booker and Bestway, but Shackleton said it had recently “thrown the net a bit wider” and had begun working with wholesalers in Europe.
Trading had “settled down to a manageable level since the manic weeks after it first opened” he said. At the time it was forced to employ a security guard to restrict the number of customers entering the store at once and the demand forced it to close for a period during the first week after running out of stock.
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