Nuturing his rapidly expanding retail operation has kept Christopher Kiley on his toes for nearly two decades.

He opened is first store, selling fresh fruit and vegetables, in Llandeilo, south Wales, in 1988. Now CK’s Supermarkets has 18 stores across the region, offering an array of fresh produce.

“The past six months have been good,” Kiley says.

“We bought three stores from Kwik Save about seven or eight months ago now and they have been doing pretty well.

“We have also got two brownfield sites that we’ve bought but we’re being stalled on planning permission to build.

“Originally, we were told the council wanted a thousand year flood survey on the site which held us up.

“We started doing the survey but how far back do records go? Not a thousand years.

“Then the government dumped the idea so we’re now looking at getting planning permission fairly soon, I’m hoping to have a meeting with the planning officer.”

But red tape is not the only issue holding back Kiley’s plans for the business.

He says developing his stores comes down to a single, overriding issue; how to find the money. “When you buy these sites it’s not like it is for Tesco - we don’t have a bottomless pit of money,” he says.

“It’s a case of seeing what you can fit on the site.

“Our stores all range between 3,000 sq ft and 8,000sq ft. In the last year we have bought sites, close to other shops that were smaller, to build on and replace them, and are always looking for more shops to buy.

“We have a store in Penclawdd that we tried to open before Christmas as we have now closed the smaller one, but it will have to open in the new year because of setbacks caused by the weather.”

The store will have a selling area of 10,000 sq ft and includes a bakery and butchery department.

Acquisitions are certainly one aspect to broadening his customer base, but Kiley claims his successes are down to offering customers more than they expect.

“We always try to top what you get elsewhere and we pride ourselves on our fresh meat and fresh fruit and vegetables,” he says. “We do our own cooked meats counter that sells hot turkey, beef and tongue.

We have been running cooked meat counters in store since we started almost 20 years ago. You have to have a point of difference in the shop.
“Earlier in the year we were put up against the main multiples for a local award and won, which we were very pleased about. The award was only from a local paper but it was for quality and price as they took both those things into consideration.”

Kiley believes health and safety is one of the most important issues in grocery retail, with hygiene at the very top of the agenda. “Tesco does it so well - you just have to get it right,” he says. “You have to build the store and get that right and then comes cleanliness. Customers notice it. The range of products also has to be good, it’s obvious but you really have to get the basics such as milk and bread right then focus on the rest.”

With new stores in the pipeline, Kiley is aware reputation and first appearances matter to the customer and believes in the importance of good staff and neat presentation of the stores - as well as the importance of learning past mistakes.

“I have made some howlers in my time,” he says. “One of the most memorable was buying equipment at an auction, which turned out to be wrong for what I wanted. But it is all part of the learning curve.”

One issue that continuously plagues Kiley is loutish behaviour - and measures put in place to cut crime nationally seem to him to have had little effect. “Vandalism is the biggest issue for us,“ he says. “It’s quite a prominent problem as there’s quite a lot of it about.

In fact, graffiti, theft from stores and the abuse of staff are all a problem for him. “We have CCTV to try and combat it and I seem to be on the phone to the police a lot but the problem isn’t going away or getting any better.”

Store numbers: 18
Staff: 420
Sales growth year-on-year: 9.2%
Type of operation: Chain of fresh food supermarkets

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