Londis (Shop)

Since just before Christmas, there has been a new Londis store open in the main shopping area of Plymouth. The location of it has been a corner shop style business for quite some time, as up until Londis took it on it was actually in fact a local Co-op shop for quite a number of years. But in effect, the layout has remained exactly the same as where things were sold when it was the Co-op they still are now for Londis!

This particular shop has been 'fitted in' to a small corner unit, after some of the shops around this area of town was re-worked after the arrival of a brand new indoor shopping centre for Plymouth's town centre. Being branded around a corner shop style of business, the only thing that it has actually got in common with a corner shop is just that - it is on a corner! But apart from this, it is actually in fact the smallest of all shops that there could ever be.

On walking in to the shop, the main till area of two tills is right in front of you. In actual fact, I don't really quite know why the Co-op ever set this one up. On one side of the till area is the newspaper/ magazine section and the drinks, on the other side are the sweets and chill cabinet.

Price wise, they sell a 500 ml bottle of water for over £1 and a packet of chewing gum for nearly 70 pence! Need I say more? They wonder why there are hardly any customers in comparison to the Co-op shop that occupied this site before, but they fail to realise that the prices that are currently being charged are almost half as much again in some instances!

The staff are not much better, as all that they are appearing to do is take your money; give you the change (if any!), and get you out as quickly as you came in again in the first place. There are no manners, and even when I say a please or a thank you there is no recognition of this.

Of course Londis is run on a franchise basis, and so therefore the people who run each store are in effect self employed business workers. All that they pay for is to use the actual main Londis name, and get their products and stock on what could be a slightly cheaper basis than if they were to running a business that was independant of anyone else (so they get the back up of a bigger company if things seem to be going a bit pear shaped).

But with this in mind, they don't seem to care about customer relations and so things are not very nice in store! All in all I won't be giving them a lot of my business, but it is up to you to decided!

Thanks for reading!