Southern Co-op is celebrating a successful Christmas trading period following a 6% increase in like-for-like sales across its stores in the three weeks to 6 January 2018, with total sales increasing 8% in the same period.
During Christmas week itself the society, which trades from 209 stores across the South of England, grew its like-for-like convenience store sales by 12.2%, and reports that trade built steadily in the run-up to Christmas Day.
Chief executive Mark Smith said: “We are delighted with these Christmas trading results. We set ourselves some particularly tough targets this year to deliver the best possible service to our customers at Christmas.
“Our colleagues rose to the challenge brilliantly as we met significantly more of our customers’ festive top-up shopping needs than last year, in a fiercely competitive market.
“These very positive results also reflect the continued development of our Co-op own brand product range and increased Southern Co-op social media activity in the run-up to Christmas.”
The society also reported total year-on-year sales growth of 6.5%, with a 3.2 % like-for-like increase, in its convenience store business for the 13 weeks ending 6 January 2018.
