My Local pilots Costa tie-up and targets Subway deal to enhance food offer

The c-store retailer, which was formed in October when convenience veteran Mike Greene fronted a Greybull Capital-backed buyout of Morrisons’ M Local business, is pressing ahead with plans to reformat its 140 stores following a “good” Christmas trading period.

Greene told Retail Week that Costa machines will be installed into six shops, while he also aims to strike deals with a number of other food and beverage companies.

“We want to reformat our stores and are looking to find the best possible partners where appropriate to help us do that”

Mike Greene, My Local

It comes after My Local’s convenience rival McColl’s revealed in July that it was piloting a partnership with Subway amid plans to create a “more sophisticated” food-to-go proposition.

Greene said: “We want to reformat our stores and are looking to find the best possible partners where appropriate to help us do that.

“We have a trial in six stores with Costa, which starts in a couple of weeks where we will look at how branded coffee trades against our value coffee offer.

“We’re having conversations with Subway, branded doughnut manufacturers and some other food franchises as well to potentially trial those products.

“It will be a case of constantly evolving by listening and talking to customers to see what they want.”

Christmas trading

Greene said My Local traded as expected over Christmas despite a shortage of seasonal lines, as sales were driven by “treat lines” and beers, wines and spirits.

“We didn’t have trading experience so we didn’t know what to expect – and the purchase date of October 26 meant we had missed a lot of Christmas,” he explained.

“The stock is pretty much bought back in April or May, so we didn’t have as much seasonal stock as I would like in there.

“Having said that, we pulled some together and it was a good period for us. We traded pretty much where we expected to be.”

Expansion

Looking forward, Greene hinted that My Local could seek to expand its 140-store portfolio this year.

When asked if he had targeted more shops, Greene said: “The priority is to get a steady and growing estate. The door is always open.

“We are and have been having conversations with other parties but, whether it’s one store or 100 stores, we will only take stores that are right for our network and will contribute to our network.

“If we had 140 awesome stores in a year’s time, I’m not going to be unhappy. We could possibly have 130, we could have 200, depending how we evolve. But there is no need or desire to target a certain number and end up with cancerous stores that pull us down.”