Store gallery: Poundland launches new large-format store to focus on fresh food

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Poundland has opened its first large-format store, offering more fresh food in a bid to attract cash-conscious customers to do their weekly shops with the discount chain.

The retailer opened its largest-ever store in Nottingham at the weekend, featuring shelves stacked with fresh fruit, vegetables and bread. The retailer has been trialling stocking and selling fresh produce in a handful of its smaller c-stores.

Alongside adding new fresh lines and rolling out the offering across 20 other large stores this year, Poundland has launched chilled and frozen food lines with plans to have them stocked in 350 stores by the autumn.

The new store is twice the size of a normal Poundland, spanning 15,000 sq ft and fitted out more like a supermarket. While grocery sales soared during the pandemic, discounter and value chains did not see the lion’s share of the uplift as more people returned to doing a big shop and shifted online during lockdown instead.

The store also offers clothing, with more than a third of the store space dedicated to the Pep&Co fashion line, as well as homewares. It will be the first Poundland to sell a range of domestic appliances such as toasters, kettles and irons.

There will also be a Costa Express self-service bar for customers.

Poundland chief executive Barry Williams told Retail Week the store is now a one-stop-shop for all potential customer needs: “What you can do now, if you go into the store, is a complete shop right across all of the FMCG categories, packaged groceries, fresh and frozen.

“We’ve got produce and alcohol in there as well. And then general merchandise – that’s been completed with the addition of domestic appliances – and then you’ve got the clothing range as well. It’s the full offer now.”

“This isn’t going to be just one shiny pin of a store in Nottingham. There’s a number following thick and fast”

Barry Williams, Poundland

“We’ve got customers pushing trolleys around, we’ve got record-breaking basket sizes that are going through and our customers are engaging positively with it. They wanted to spend more with us. What we needed to do was house the proposition in an environment that made it easier for them to do that.”

The next large-format store will open in Teesside in two weeks. William added: “This isn’t going to be just one shiny pin of a store in Nottingham. There’s a number following thick and fast.”

However, as the ongoing cost-of-living crunch worsens and customers look to return to physical locations, Williams is confident that value retailer sales are growing again.

He said: “It’s Poundland; we are known for amazing value. What we had to do was broaden our appeal. We are entering into new categories and we are starting to see that come through. Our market share is growing and our average transaction value, that’s increasing.”

Williams also said Poundland is grappling with rising costs when it comes to its supply chain.

He added: “It’s been tough. We certainly aren’t out of the woods left. In the run-up to Christmas, the availability of casual labour in our depots was a bit of a challenge, although that’s OK now.

“Containers – while the prices are coming down, they are still astronomically expensive compared to what they normally were. The visibility of stock and getting it shipped on time is still a challenge.”