FARMFOODS

'Farmfoods' is the name of a supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Farmfoods specialise in frozen food and also gain sales through a range of grocery items, including soft drinks, confectionary and more recently, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Contents

History

Acquisitions

Store format and trading style

Grocery Items

Litigation

Mission statement and training

References

External links

History

Farmfoods is one of the most successful privately-owned businesses in the United Kingdom and has traded profitably for nearly 50 years.
From its roots as an Aberdeen-based meat manufacturing business, Farmfoods began to freeze products to enable a wider geographical distribution to catering outlets. Steadily, products were dispatched further afield, to major Scottish cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh and with growth, further lines such as McCain chips were introduced.
By 1975 the entire business had changed and focused on retail rather than wholesale supply. An experimental freezer centre was set up in Aberdeen and was very successful. A further 10 freezer centres were introduced and the modern Farmfoods was formed.

Acquisitions

Farmfoods operated 31 stores in 1988 and gained initial entry into England through the acquisition of 18 stores from Wallis Frozen Foods.
In the early 1990s, Farmfoods expanded further with the acquisition of Capital Freezer Centres.
As of April 2005, Farmfoods operates from over 300 specialist freezer centres stretching from Invergordon in the North of Scotland to London in the South of England.
Farmfoods stores are typically located in city and town centres, often in shopping centres. However, recently Farmfoods have started to focus on opening stores near the edge of towns, where they have their own car park and are able to open for longer periods.

Store format and trading style

Generally, stores are in the form of aisles with waist-height Novum freezer cabinets running along each side and shelving above most freezers. Popular items, such as soft drinks and canned foods are often placed in the middle of aisles atop plastic plinths to protect goods from damage.
There are many exceptions to this generalisation. Some stores have sections with full hight shelving. These house groups of products such as pet food or the ever-growing selection of Toiletry/Household items. In the past the design of each shop had been tailored to the general layout of the store. Since many of the older stores were not built to be freezer centres they are often too small and awkwardly shaped making them hard to traverse. Recently the company has developed a standard wheelchair friendly layout which all the new and much larger stores, such as Cumbernauld, Cambuslang and Coatbridge, all conform to.
In 2005 Farmfoods changed the maximum height of shelving in all of its stores. This was a reaction to a number of staff related accidents related to staff either falling off cabinets or falling through the glass lids while attempting to stock the high shelves. At around this time a poster was placed on all staff notice boards highlighting the dangers of standing on freezer lids and stating this practice was strictly forbidden.
Smaller stores tend to have only two or three checkouts with space for a customer to place a basket onto the checkout for the casher to access as they scan each item. The company is currently installing conveyor belt driven checkout areas in larger stores. These provide considerably more space to place scanned items and allow the checkout experience to be more streamlined for customers with trolleys as they are not required to lift shopping to the checkout as they are served. All new stores opened by the company have these new checkouts.
Farmfoods stores typically have a small staff base and a large number of regular shoppers. The company caters to a wide variety of customers, especially pensioners and families with young children. Items are individually priced, and most have a multi-buy price (for example, 30p or four for £1).

Grocery Items

Although the company initially and still focuses on providing top quality frozen food it has developed a large range of grocery items in recent years. The grocery range originally consisted of only Farmfoods branded items but recently there has been shifts toward selling items from well know brands such as H. J. Heinz Company and Princes with most of the own branded items being discontinued.

Litigation

In March 2007 Farmfoods was fined more than £23,000 after being found guilty of selling food that was unfit for human consumption. This was a result of a mice infestation at its Kirkby store and led to a company wide initiative to deep clean all the stores especially behind cabinets and in back shop areas.^[1]

Mission statement and training

All staff are required to learn the company's mission statement and be able to recite it on command.
:''"Farmfoods, Britain's Frozen Food Specialists, sell top quality frozen foods and groceries at fantastic prices, in clean and tidy stores where the customer is the VIP, and the personal service is VERY SMILEY!"''

This is printed on the front cover of each of the sections of the 'Know about Farmfoods' staff-training program, which new members of staff must complete within a few months of starting, to receive a ‘Know about Farmfoods’ certificate recognising their training.^[2] The program covers a number of areas including health and safety, stocktaking, hygiene, tills, customer service and security.

References

1. "Mice infestation costs Farmfoods store more than £23,000", Knowsley Online. Article dated 2007-03-09, retrieved 2007-03-26.
2. Know about Farmfoods! Staff training programme. Publication: March 2007

External links

★ Farmfoods website

★ Farmfoods Staff Forum