Farmfoods

Farmfoods Limited

Farmfoods logo
Company type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	1954
Headquarters	Cumbernauld, Scotland, UK
Number of locations	300
Key people	Eric Herd (Chairman)
Products	frozen food
Number of employees	3071 (2005)
Website	www.farmfoods.co.uk

Farmfoods is an expanding supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. Farmfoods' stores specialise in frozen food and also offer a large range of everyday essentials and grocery items; including soft drinks, confectionery, bread, milk, deserts along with fresh fruit and vegetables.

History

Farmfoods is one of the most successful privately-owned businesses in the United Kingdom and has traded profitably for nearly 50 years.

From its roots as an Aberdeen-based meat manufacturing business, Farmfoods began to freeze products to enable a wider geographical distribution to catering outlets. Steadily, products were dispatched further afield, to major Scottish cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh and with growth, further lines by larger manufacturers such as chips by McCain were introduced.

By 1975 the entire business had changed and focused on retail rather than wholesale supply. An experimental freezer centre was set up in Aberdeen and was very successful. A further 10 freezer centres were opened across Scotland and Farmfoods as we know it was formed.

Acquisitions & Growth

Farmfoods operated 31 stores in 1988 and gained initial entry into England through the acquisition of 18 stores from Wallis Frozen Foods.

In the early 90s, Farmfoods expanded further with the acquisition of the Capital Freezer Centres chain.

As of April 2005, Farmfoods operates more than 300 specialist freezer centres stretching from Invergordon in the North of Scotland to Dover in the South East of England.

Farmfoods stores are typically located in city and town centres, more-often-than-not in stand-alone units complete with dedicated parking, however occasionally stores are located in shopping centres. However, recently Farmfoods have started to focus on opening stores near the edge of towns, where they have their own larger car parks and are able to open for longer periods.

Store Formats & Trading Style

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Typical Modern Farmfoods Store

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Generally, stores are in the form of aisles with waist-height freezer cabinets running along each side and shelving above most freezers. Popular items, such as soft drinks and canned foods are often placed in the middle of aisles (atop plastic plinths to protect goods from damage) in a "stack it high, sell it cheap" format

There are many exceptions to this generalisation as all stores are unique. Some stores have sections with full height shelving. These house groups of products such as pet food or the ever-growing selection of toiletry and other household items. In the past the design of each shop had been tailored to the general layout of the store. Since many of the older stores were not built to be freezer centres they are often too small and awkwardly shaped making them hard to traverse. Recently the company has developed a standard wheelchair friendly layout which all the new and much larger stores, such as Cumbernauld, Cambuslang and Coatbridge, all conform to. Older stores were recently adapted and had their previous layouts altered to make movement around the stores easier and more pleasant.

In 2005 Farmfoods changed the maximum height of shelving in all of its stores. This was a reaction to a number of staff-related accidents relating to staff either falling off cabinets or falling through the glass lids while attempting to stock the higher shelves. This time a poster was placed on all staff notice boards highlighting the dangers of standing on freezer lids and stating this practice was strictly forbidden by the business.

Smaller stores tend to have two-four checkouts with space for a customer to place a basket onto the checkout for the cashier to access as they scan each item. The company is currently installing conveyor belt driven checkout areas in larger stores. These provide considerably more space to place scanned items and allow the checkout experience to be more streamlined for customers with trolleys as they are not required to lift shopping to the checkout as they are served. All new stores opened by the company as of autumn 2007 have these new checkouts.

Farmfoods stores typically have a small staff base (to ensure costs are kept low) and a large number of regular shoppers. The company caters to a wide variety of customers, especially older-folk and families with young children. All items are individually priced, and many have a multi-buy price (for example, 30p or 4 for £1) and other such offers like buy one get ones frees.

Grocery Items

Although the company initially and still focuses on providing top quality frozen food it has developed a large range of grocery items in recent years. The grocery range originally consisted of only Farmfoods branded items but recently there has been a shift towards selling a large number of items from well-known brands such as H. J. Heinz Company and Princes, with most of Farmfoods' own lines becoming value brands in their own right.

Litigation

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Typical Modern Farmfoods Store

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In March 2007, Farmfoods was fined circa £23,000 after being found guilty of selling food that was unfit for human consumption. This was a result of a mice infestation at its Kirkby store and led to a company wide initiative to deep clean all the stores especially behind cabinets and in back shop areas. This initial drive was fully completed by the business in around a month of the story in March 2007. Following this it's rigidly adhered to across all stores in the chain.

External links

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• Farmfoods Homepage
• Top Track 250 details