Seasonal sales success!

Sales at Lincolnshire Co-op shot up during the busy festive season with shoppers taking advantage of extra dividend and trusting the retailer to deliver a fantastic festive range, including an array of locally-sourced products.

In the three week period from 11th December to 31st December, like-for-like sales in the Society’s food stores saw a 12.6% increase.

The two week period from 18th December to 31st December saw like-for-like sales up 17.7 per cent – with Christmas Eve breaking records for the number of customer visits and sales.

In December, Lincolnshire Co-op paid out a dividend bonus of £1.6m to its 260,000 members, on top of the £1.9m collected during the year. In that month, members used £1.3m of dividend to paid for their shopping in food stores.

Many shoppers celebrated by tippling on Prosecco, with the Italian drink outselling the more traditional champagne by six bottles to one.

Goods sourced from the Society’s trading area performed well during the period:

• Lincolnshire Co-op's own bakery Gadsby's saw its festive range sales increase by 15 per cent with a record-breaking 152,000 individual mince pies sold.
• Sales of the Love Local range saw 30% growth. Local cheeses proved particularly popular with sales doubling.

Chief Retail Officer Mark Finn said: "We've had an exceptional festive performance and my thanks go out to every member of our team, from the frontline staff in our stores to those in our warehouses and support offices. It's their hard work which has made this happen, as well as the support of our customers and members - we worked hard all year to give them great service, availability and value.

"We had a fantastic Christmas range on sale and many customers pre-ordered products like turkeys as they trusted us to deliver. Our community-based locations and long opening hours meant people could conveniently pick up everything they needed to make their celebration special by just popping into their local Lincolnshire Co-op.

"We also paid out our dividend bonus before Christmas and we were pleased to see members treating themselves with dividend this festive season."