2024 Retailer of the Year – Creightons of Balmoral

A South Belfast staple for the last eight years, Creightons of Balmoral has proven itself to be a core part of the retailing community in the area. This status was cemented when they claimed the Northern Ireland Retailer of the Year title at this year’s NR Awards.

Trading since May 2016, Balmoral was the third store to open in the Creighton Group.

Owned by Niall Creighton and his sister, Gail Boyd, the company now extends to four sites, with the Balmoral store standing proudly at 6000 sq ft.

Over the last number of years they have grown key parts of their store, with the deli and fresh food now critical components of the business.

Employing some 75 staff across full-time and part-time, General Manager Andrew Porter has been working for the company for over 30 years and has witnessed impressive growth in the business and throughout the industry here.

“The most significant thing I would say is the standards of stores throughout the country, they are all so impressive now,” Andrew told NR.

“There has been a demand and the standard of stores, and retail standards generally, are second-to-none, and that has been a big change over the years.

“The stores here were always ahead, but going back 30 years people didn’t care as much how products were put on the shelves, but now everything has got to be perfect.”

With such high praise for store standards across Northern Ireland, Andrew said they had no expectations of winning the top title at this year’s Neighbourhood Retailer Awards.

“We won Store of the Year Category 3 and were delighted with that. When it came to the Retailer of the Year award, we had absolutely no idea that we were going to win in,” said Andrew.

“We see it as a very prestigious award, and a very hard one to win – there are so many good stores, so we are absolutely delighted.”

Built in a highly residential area, the Creighton Group was limited in the space they had for building the Balmoral store, and as demand for bigger and better deli and hot food products increased, they had to use some creative thinking as to how they could grow the space.

“We couldn’t go up or out, so we had to go down,” said Andrew. Giving NR a tour of their production kitchen, Andrew proudly discusses the quality of the food produced by their dedicated kitchen staff.

“In the last five years, we started off with a small production kitchen in the basement of the business. That started to grow and in the last few years, we have a really good team of staff in there and we are nearly at capacity already in terms of production.”

A testament to the quality of the food and cooking, in the last three years Creightons of Balmoral have won four Great Taste Awards, three for soups and in 2024 they won one for their lasagne.

“That really rubberstamps everything that’s going on in there,” said Andrew.

“We wanted to build a kitchen as we wanted to put fresh food and deli as the main part of our business and it has worked very well for us. It’s very hard work and it was challenging in the early days, but now we’re producing consistently first-class products.

“These are commonly the first parts of business you would get complaints, and happily we rarely get complaints. We’re making more than ever, we’re selling more than ever and everybody seems to be happy.”

YOU CAN SEE THE FULL FEATURE ON CREIGHTONS OF BALMORAL IN THE NOVEMBER-DECEMBER ISSUE OF NEIGHBOURHOOD RETAILER, CLICK HERE