Ideas to Take Away, sponsored by Cadbury Trebor Bassett, is back once again at CRS with 10 different concepts to boost footfall and profit in stores.

An Ideas to Take Away film will be shown on a big-screen TV throughout the show.

This year's film features Suru Patel, who has a Londis store with a post office in Lydd, Kent, but who also provides a mobile post office service to outlying villages.

Patel says: "A lot of village post offices are shutting down and I was getting a lot of customers coming in from the villages saying it would be nice if I could take a service to them, so I contacted the Post Office.

"Now every Tuesday I travel to nearby villages with a 'luggable unit' and I can offer villagers all the same services I offer from my post office. So they can send letters and parcels, pay bills and even get their car tax."

His service is secure thanks to a special James Bond-style briefcase, which has an automatic alarm and dye system. "If the briefcase is away from me for more than three minutes the dye is automatically activated, covering all the money and stamps so they are no good to anybody."

Meanwhile, Andrew Newton, who has a Nisa Local store in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands, has a talent for drumming up free publicity.

He ran a 'free trolley dash' competition in conjunction with his local paper and managed to get £300-worth of publicity for the price of the trolley contents. "We budgeted for about £100," says Newton, "but the dash cost us less than £30."

He also campaigned to get a post box outside his store. "It might not sound much but it was important as an extra service. We are on a steep hill so it's quite a walk for some people to get to the nearest box." The campaign was also covered in the local paper.

Another retailer decided to make his own ready meals, pizzas and cakes. Simon Biddle, from Biddles in Webheath, Redditch, has customers coming from miles around to try out his fare. He offers everything from lasagne and macaroni cheese to toad in the hole and liver & bacon.

The traditional cakes on offer include a Victoria sponge and a coffee & walnut cake.

"We even cater for dinner parties," says Biddle. "People bring in their own dishes and we fill them for them. Whether they let on to their guests that the food's not homemade, I don't know." n

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