Increasing Member Trade, Co-op House Nursery & Combatting Retail Crime
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Published 11 Aug 2023 in Phil's blog
I would like to start this week’s blog with a thank you to all our colleagues contributing towards our record member trade. As you might have read in our story earlier this week, we are now at a pleasing 30.1% for Society member trade with a breakdown of 29.1% in Food, 59% in Travel, 98.7% in Childcare, 50.6% in Utilities and 36.7% in Phone Co-op, according to the latest period update.
With a collective team effort across all trading areas, our colleagues are doing a great job serving our members and customers. The Food member trade is increasing too and is already up to 30%, which is excellent. Please continue to promote new member sign-ups and ask existing members for their cards every time they shop so that we can drive member trade even higher.
Over in our Travel business, we are having a really strong year for sales across all of the channels and on Thursday this week I joined our Chief Officer for National Businesses, Sara Dunham, in visiting a number of our travel branches to talk with colleagues and hear first-hand how they are achieving such great numbers. I was particularly interested to hear about the growth of our own tour business Co-op Holidays where we have been developing some fabulous new destinations and tours. It was a pleasure to meet with all of the colleagues including two of our newest, Charlotte and Chloe at our Halesowen branch. They have both joined within the last year and are doing a brilliant job in growing Co-op holidays where 1 in 10 of all holidays sold at their branch is one of our own tours now.
Sara Dunham, Chief Officer for National Businesses (middle) with colleagues Chloe (left) and Charlotte (right) from Halesowen Travel.
To read more about how colleagues are impacting member trade click here.
Your Co-op Little Pioneers Co-op House Nursery is coming
If you have visited Co-op House over the past week you will have seen the transformations taking place to allow for our brand-new nursery at our Warwick Support Office following a £360k investment. With the plan to re-purpose some of the existing office floor space on the ground floor. The nursery will open in October 2023 and will offer spaces for around 68 children aged from three months to five years.
An area of Co-op House on the way to becoming a nursery
As an overview, it will have two separate rooms and a tailored environment for each age group to support their learning and development. Ensuring the children have endless fun during their time with us. It will also offer a garden for outdoor play and a dedicated Forest School area on site.
Standards are very high across our current nursery base, with all nurseries holding Millie’s Mark accreditation, Eco-Schools Silver status as well a score of 9.8 on Day Nurseries.co.uk. Once the nursery is launched, the team at Co-op House will be seeking to secure these accolades quickly.
All colleagues and parents can get excited too. As we approach the launch date in October, the Nursery will be holding exclusive visiting opportunities towards the end of August so you can take a look around the brand-new nursery and speak to the expert team to answer any questions. For more information on booking a visit, please complete the form on the Colleagues Connect here.
A fantastic addition to our nurseries, I look forward to sharing more soon!
Combatting Retail Crime – Update
A few weeks ago, I met with the Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands to talk about the need for a zero-tolerance approach and how they can help support us in our fight against retail crime. Since then, we have been pushing the agenda to get better support from the police, as well as increased support for our colleagues. Check back next week, during my colleague Q&A session with Meg Ridley from our Safe Stores team for more updates on the subject.
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