How to run a local shop
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Corner shop, mom and pop store or konbini, whatever you call them, most of us have a local business that sells convenience.
Rising food costs mean many are struggling to make a profit, one solution is to improve the fresh food and beverage offering which can have better margins.
Ruth Alexander visits a convenience store in Morley in West Yorkshire in the UK, where owner Ajay Singh has introduced cocktails and street food alongside the traditional offering of bread and milk. Retail analyst Rob Wilson from L.E.K. Consulting explains why the US is looking to Japan for inspiration. Reporter Phoebe Amoroso reports from Tokyo, visiting some of the biggest chain convenience stores in the country and finding out what has made them so successful.
And author Ann Y.K. Choi tells Ruth what it takes to run a convenience store, reflecting on her family’s experiences running such businesses in Toronto after moving there from Korea in 1975.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
(Image: from left to right, Jazz Singh, Ajay Singh and Suki Singh who run Premier Morley convenience store in the UK. Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:40.4 | Here we are outside a very everyday site. |
| 0:43.6 | You've probably got one of these in your local town. |
| 0:45.7 | It's a convenience store. |
| 0:51.9 | These kind of local shops, mom and pop shops, variety stores, |
| 0:55.4 | corner stores, corner shops, whatever you call it. |
| 0:58.3 | They kind of form the backdrop to our lives, don't they? |
| 1:01.0 | You walk past them, you pop in them, you pop out of them. |
| 1:06.3 | But have you ever really stopped to think about who runs them, how they run them, |
| 1:08.3 | and how they manage to survive. |
| 1:14.9 | This is the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander. |
| 1:19.4 | And this week, we're looking at what it takes to run a local store. |
| 1:23.9 | Hello, Ruth and Beatrice from the BBC. |
| 1:25.2 | Oh, hi there, how are you doing? |
| 1:26.5 | Very well, thank you. |
| 1:45.0 | My son, AJ, he was expecting it. Thank you. Hi, AJ. I'm Ruth. Nice to meet you. AJ, I hear you have been working very hard at this business and you do things a little bit differently to try and keep yourself ahead of the competition. So I'd love to have a tour if you could show me what you do. That's fine yeah well this is this is Premier Mali and we have been around |
| 1:50.9 | the Mali area for around 40 years now my granddad had the store passed it down to my dad and now I've |
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