Business
The corner shop that outlived the chain
A supermarket opened across the road in 2019. The shop that was supposed to die is hiring.
When the chain store opened opposite, everyone told Farida to sell up.
Six years later the chain has cut its opening hours twice and she has put on two members of staff.
Margins, not footfall Farida's answer is unglamorous: she stopped competing on the forty products the chain sells cheapest, and doubled the range on everything it does not stock at all.
"They can beat me on milk. They cannot beat me on knowing that Mrs Owusu wants her bread on Thursday."
The shop now runs a delivery round of eighty-one households. None of it is online. All of it is written in a notebook behind the till.