Spar retailers all over Ireland are going above and beyond to serve their customers, their local communities and crucially the most vulnerable in our society. They are doing this in many ways including home deliveries, telephone orders and a number of other initiatives designed to make life easier for its customers. For Louis Byrne, owner and operator of Spar Caherslee, Tralee and Spar Oak Park, Tralee, this included making a special delivery of Spar water, baked goods and some sweet treats to the heroes working on the front lines in University Hospital Kerry recently. 'Louis and Spar are keen to take a moment to show its appreciation for the tremendous work those working in our healthcare system are doing in the most challenging of circumstances,' the group said.
BWG Foods has said that is it proud to be supporting RTÉ’s new Operation Transformation: Keeping Well Apart series. This is a special series and focuses on experts and the participants sharing their knowledge and real-life experience to help others as we stay apart to keep safe and healthy. BWG Foods is the supporting retail group for the opening two weeks of this special edition of the show with its retail brands Spar, Europspar, Mace and Londis. One of our independent retailers from each symbol delivers all of the grocery needs of show participants to them. Susan Barry, owner of Mace Beaumont, arranged two deliveries of groceries to feed the Ryan Mongey family. Spar Murroe delivered the groceries for the two weeks of the show to the Ryan family, Mulroy’s Londis Moneen Roundabout, Castlebar did likewise for the Gavins and Europar Ballymun looked after the grocery needs of Ann Brophy, who is cocooning in Santry.
XL Ireland has launched a Facebook campaign using animated Irish flashcards to encourage learning Irish. Every day a new flashcard is introduced as part of the ‘How Good Is Your Gaeilge?’ campaign. 'At a time when parents across the country are home-schooling, this campaign was created as an fun educational support tool to teach common words, phrases and facts, as Gaeilge, to all ages,' the retailer said. These Irish flashcards include a wide variety of phrases and words from food such as bananas and apples to everyday household items such as keys and money.
Health-related measures, such as social distancing and the use of protective equipment, are likely to remain in place beyond the current coronavirus crisis, according to Michel-Édouard Leclerc, the chief executive of French retailer E. Leclerc, reports esmmagazine.com. However, the supermarket boss believes that such measures will no longer be seen as a "constraint" to stores, but could work in a store's favour. "Large food and non-food areas can offer much safer capacities due to their size," he wrote in a post on his blog.
Just Eat has announced new saving solutions that it has agreed with several Irish companies to further support its network of restaurant partners during the COVID-19 crisis. The solutions include an agreement by car sharing company GoCar to offer a discount on car rentals for Just Eat restaurant partners; a contactless payment agreement with Elavon to give existing Just Eat restaurant partners the option to avail of preferential rates on Evalon's secure payment systems; an agreement with Nutritics for a 25% discount on the company's centralised nutrition software for the efficient management of recipes, menus and production; and an offer to Just Eat restaurant partners of a 20% reduction on unsecured business loan fees through Dublin-based peer-to-peer lending platform Linked Finance, which aims to provide a source of financial support for local SMEs that can be accessed quickly and easily.
Britain's economy looks set for a widely feared record contraction after figures showed retail spending plunged by more than a quarter and one in four firms stopped trading temporarily due to the coronavirus lockdown. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported on Thursday a 27% year-on-year drop in sales in the two weeks to 4 April, which included the period after the 23 March start of a lockdown that has shuttered shops other than supermarkets. "The closure of non-essential shops led to deserted high streets and high double-digit declines in sales which even a rise in online shopping could not compensate for," BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said.
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