Centra eyes 20 new stores as sales near €1.6bn

The convenience store franchise, Centra, will open 20 new stores this year and revamp 100 others as part of a €20 million investment plan.

The Musgrave-owned chain also grew sales last year by 3 per cent to €1.59 billion, delegates will be told Monday at its annual conference in Killarney.

Centra said the expansion will create about 460 new jobs, as it continues a retooling of its store network to capitalise on a structural shift in the convenience grocery market towards healthier options.

The chain, which competes with the BWG-owned Spar stores as well as Mace and Londis, is rolling out its "Live Every Day" store design, which gives greater prominence to fruits and salad offerings. It is also accelerating the rollout of its Frank and Honest in-store hot coffee offering, which is currently available in 260 of its 450 stores but will hit 330 by the end of March.

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Healthy options

Martin Kelleher, managing director of Centra, said the shift towards more healthy options in Ireland's fiercely competitive convenience sector is "definitely not a fad".

He said Centra had cut shelf space for fizzy drinks in favour of water sales, while it has tweaked the recipes for its baked in-store bread to reflect changing customer tastes, boosting their sales by 10 per cent.

Sales of salad boxes are up 80 per cent, while the range of fruits and other healthier options have been extended under the Live Every Day scheme.

Meanwhile, sales of in-store hot coffee have risen to €5 million a year across its network since Centra introduced its Frank and Honest brand, which was developed in-house.

Mr Kelleher said the 1,000 delegates at its Killarney conference, including franchisees and Musgrave executives, would discuss how to invest further in advertising Frank and Honest, most likely via a stepped-up social media campaign.

New openings

The expansion of its footprint would include the entry of new franchisees across its three store formats, including its standard convenience format, which would account for the bulk of new openings.

The other two are its small city outlets known as “high convenience” and its larger “neighbourhood” outlets, which compete with small supermarkets.

Mr Kelleher said some of its expansion would also come from opening new garage forecourt retail sites, of which it currently has almost 70.

He said the increase in its sales to €1.59 billion was “almost all volume-based”, due to very low inflation in the grocery sector.

“Brexit is the big unknown. The second half of the year was tighter in Border areas. but the growth was very much spread around the State. It wasn’t just all about the urban areas like Dublin,” he said.