The SPAR Dalbeattie store has a strong focus on fresh fruit and vegetables, chilled foods, and caters to key customer missions, including ‘making a meal’ and ‘grab and eat’.
SPAR Dalbeattie prides itself on being a real community store with all the staff members living locally to the shop. Marie McMinn, the store manager, along with her team, invited the community to an instore launch event on Friday 22 April. Customers took the opportunity to pick up free goody bags, spin the wheel to win prizes, and sample some treats. The event also saw two local organisations, Alma Mcfayden Care Home and Dalbeattie Playgroup, receive donations of £1,000 each from SPAR Scotland.
As well as a range of products available in-store from a large deli counter, the store features an extensive range of fresh produce and food from many other local suppliers. These include Irving’s Bakery, Mitchells of Castle Douglas, Irthingvale Wholesale, Lockerbie Cheddars, Galloway Preserves, to name but a few.
For those customers looking for a food-to-go offer, SPAR Scotland’s ‘CJ’s’ Food to Go counter offers delicious ready-to-eat hot breakfast rolls throughout the morning and extends into the evening with a selection of tasty hot food. This is complemented by award-winning craft Scottish baker Browning’s, offering a wide selection of bakery products, morning goods and cakes.
CJ Lang & Son Ltd company-owned stores operations director Brian Straiton commented: “We are delighted to have acquired the Kinnaird’s store. We have acquired a successful family run business and recognise all the great work James Kinnaird and his team have undertaken in the local community over many years.”
“We are very excited to be back in the property market to acquire new convenience stores as part of our business strategy of adding 3 to 4 stores per year to our company-owned estate”, he added.
“SPAR Market is an exciting new fresh, chilled, and produce store format for CJ Lang and SPAR Scotland that will help to differentiate and grow from our traditional SPAR customer offer. As a genuinely Scottish family business, we share many similar values with the Kinnaird family. We want to maintain all the great work that they have done and build upon these while adding additional SPAR Scotland products and services to the store,” he concluded.
Source: SPAR UK
The UK became a SPAR member in 1956 when SPAR International granted the SPAR licence to a group of independent wholesalers. As a result, there are now five regional partners in the UK. A central office in London provides national marketing and buying services for the group.
SPAR has led the highly competitive convenience market in the UK for many years. Always innovative, the five regional partners continue to grow the brand. SPAR UK comprises independently owned licensed retailers and company-owned stores. These include forecourts, airports, train stations, city centres, and local neighbourhood stores.
A home shopping delivery service will continue, complemented by the introduction of the Snappy Shopper app.
