Martin Kelleher, managing director of Musgrave Retail Partners Ireland, has said that the supermarket 'veg wars' carried out by several retailers in the run up to last Christmas were "ridiculous".
In an interview in the Irish Independent, Kelleher said that while SuperValu has "to be competitive, there are certain things that were not appropriate. That was one of them."
During the so-called 'veg wars', SuperValu too lowered the price of certain products, to 19 cent, donating 14 cent of that to Focus Ireland. "We wont be doing anything that insults our producers," Kelleher told the paper. "I think consumers appreciate that and recognised what we did."
In the interview, Kelleher also makes reference to the rebrand of Superquinn stores as SuperValu outlets, which he says is "going good […] Obviously, with a brand like Superquinn, it has taken time for people to understand what SuperValu is about, but we are very happy with the progress we are making."
On the immediate response from the general public, he added, "After the brand changeover, Twitter was all about the sausages. That was a little disappointing as we were announcing a broader number of events, including redundancies. It was funny to see people were more concerned about the sausages."
