Corner shops are ‘at the heart of the community’.
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One of the findings in the recent questionnaire asking Sidmouthians about life under coronavirus has been the appreciation of the ‘corner shop’:
Managing during and after lockdown in Sidmouth
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Drew’s of Sidbury being but one:
Drews Butchers in Sidbury – Sidbury Village Website
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As the Sun reports:
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Lockdown shoppers spark massive 40 per cent rise in earnings for corner shops
SHOPPERS have sparked a massive 40 per cent rise in takings for Britain’s army of traditional corner shops, newsagents and independent grocers after they provided vital supplies to the nation during lockdown.
Unsurprisingly, every major supermarket chain saw a rise in sales in the 12 week period to April 19 as panic buying and hoarding saw the shelves cleared of everything from pasta to toilet rolls.
But none saw the kind of increase in local, smaller shops – who were often supplying the elderly and vulnerable.
Independents and chains of small stores, such as Spar and Nisa, were up by 40.5 per cent to £668million and their share of the market was up from 1.7 per cent this time last year to 2.2 per cent now…
Kantar’s head of retail and consumer insight, Fraser McKevitt, said: “Grocery retailers and their staff have been rightly praised for keeping the nation fed and watered during the coronavirus pandemic.”
Corner shops, though, are coming into their own, he added, as many people are adhering to the rules on making unnecessary journeys and preferring to shop closer to home…
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And every newspaper it seems is interested:
How coronavirus has changed the way we shop… forever | telegraph.co.uk
Corner shops providing 600,000 deliveries a week as services skyrocket | talkingretail.com
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But independent retailers, as ‘frontline workers’, are particularly vulnerable:
Watford newsagent Himanshu Patel dies of coronavirus | conveniencestore.co.uk
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And can we be sure that their dedication if not sacrifice will mean that they will come out at the end?
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In Exeter, there are fears for the future of the high street – as reported by Paul Nero on Radio Exe on-line:
More than half of Exeter businesses could fold
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photo: google maps