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HISTORY & HERITAGE
More choice for customers
Booths has been on the scene in Kendal since the 1930s. Its hallmark is a high standard of food, choice and personal service – qualities the company is determined to retain after its relocation within the town centre.
Inside of one of Booths’ newest stores, at Kirkby Lonsdale.
In fact, the main thrust of the move is to be able to dish up an even bigger feast of goods from Booths’ 25,000-strong product range - from chefs’ most basic ingredients to tantalising delicacies shoppers would be hard pressed to find elsewhere. Much of Booths’ success lies in its focus on regionality. The company only operates within Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire, and more than 25 per cent of its products come from around the region.
Of its 27 stores, many can be found across South Lakeland and north Lancashire, including Kirkby Lonsdale, Windermere, Ulverston, Carnforth and Lancaster.
“What a bigger store means is that we will be able to bring more choice to customers – that’s what’s really important about this,” said Booths’ marketing manger Lincoln Clarke. “Regionality is important to us in terms of our identity,” he added. Booths attracts shoppers with a love of cooking to the tourist passing through, looking to indulge in some local produce. People are also becomingly increasingly interested in the varieties between products, and want to know what the differences are between for example virgin and olive. “We have a motivated team of buyers who are so passionate about the products they select,” said Mr Clarke. “We offer a very good alternative to the big multiples. People can identify with Booths and customers become very loyal.” Shelves at Booths boast such an extensive range of marmalades and preserves the company has produced a leaflet about them, while its offering of beers has won awards. The supermarket has also just beaten off competition from the multi-nationals, off-licences and specialist wine outlets after The Wine Magazine voted it wine merchant of the year 2002. As the title suggests, Booths has the best range of wines available on the high street in the UK.
“While we stock major brands of wine our wine buyer Sally Holloway is finding distinctive and unusual wines from smaller suppliers and helping them bring their products to market,” explained Mr Clarke. As a result, Booths has launched a website – booths-wine.co.uk – enabling customers to order on-line.
State-of-the-art checkout services are promised
for the new Stricklandgate store.
“When people come and experience Booths for the first time they are hooked,” he said. “We don’t mind that they go and shop in other places but they do come back to Booths because they can get things they can’t get anywhere else.”
Diversity and provenance are key ingredients for Booth.“Customers and consumers are increasingly interested in where things come from,” said Mr Clarke. Top of the range products are also on the shelves, such as the best olive oils Italy has to offer. “Where things come from is a hall mark of quality and people can trust that.”
Booths’ properties director Graham Booth, whose brother Edwin is company chairman, said the store’s new location would reinforce the town centre as a shopping destination by linking in with Stricklandgate and other areas of Kendal. He said the difficulty of relocating lay in finding a level piece of land large enough in the town.
“We have really appreciated the skills that Maple Grove has brought to it – they have been able to use their skills to acquire the patchwork of plots and put this scheme together.”
While the current Highgate shop covers almost 7,000 sq ft of public sales area, the new store will have 18,000 sq ft. “What it means for us first of all is that there will be a vast increase in choice,” said Mr Booth.
Booths’ properties director Graham Booth.
He said that was vitally important for products such as wines and spirits – an area in which Booth has secured the title of Wine Retailer of the Year, 2002. “We have a range that is second-to-none in wines and bottled beers – to display the range I need modern stores.” Although the plans for inside the store are still in the melting pot, he was able to reveal plans for a tea room, speedy checkout service for people buying snack meals for lunch, an in-store bakery with hot food, fresh fish counter, a traditional butcher and Booth’s trademark delicatessen counter.
“Anyone who loves food will come in and browse. There’s two ways at looking at grocery shopping – it is a necessity and we all have to do it - if you can turn that into a pleasure it makes life so much more fun and interesting.”
The family-run business has inspired a loyal following among its staff with some employees having been on the payroll for more than 20 years. Mr Booth told The Westmorland Gazette: “I can confidently say we will be creating 50 extra jobs on top of the 80 at the Highgate store.”
Reproduced courtesy of The Westmorland Gazette,
'New Horizon', Friday, March 14, 2003
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