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The pilot scheme will see the sustainably powered vehicles join Lidl’s logistic fleet at its Newbridge Regional Distribution Centre.It marks the start of the retailer’s transition from fossil fuel commercial vehicles to more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Lidl also said the move furthers its commitment to becoming a carbon neutral business by 2025, alongside the ongoing journey to a 46% reduction in its operational emissions by 2030.

This move is a first in the Irish food retail industry in conjunction with refrigerated delivery suppliers Zellwood.

The introduction of the new trucks is the initial step to a larger rollout across Lidl’s logistics fleet that deliver to its four distribution centres and over 200 Lidl stores throughout the island of Ireland, on a daily basis.

Lidl Ireland’s logistics fleet covered more than 16.8 million kilometres last year – equivalent to 21 return trips to the moon.

It said the HVO vehicle will reduce emissions by 90% per trip by using 100% renewable fuel, which is produced by the hydrotreatment of vegetable oil that create a fuel product with the same chemical structure as diesel.

Robert Ryan, Chief Operating Officer, Lidl Ireland & Northern Ireland, said the company was delighted to be the first retailer in Ireland to incorporate positive change by use of these environmentally friendly haulage trucks into its logistics fleet.

“Not only does it accelerate our journey to cleaner roads, but in turn with the soaring cost of fossil fuels like diesel it will keep prices down for our customers. We are looking forward to the journey ahead to scale up adaption across our entire fleet aligning to our sustainable environmental commitments and goals,” Mr Ryan added.

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Matt Montgomery (32) admits there was a time when he was saying ‘Never again’ when it came to retail – but this May he cracked open the Prosecco to celebrate his first year at The Secret Market in Holywood.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride getting there, with a few false starts along the way, he admits – but now he’s selling fresh produce to the likes of celebrity Yotam Ottolenghi and supplying Hollywood blockbusters with fruit and veg for their banquet scenes.

Born in Belfast, Matt moved to California at the age of one, then to Chicago at 10 and back to Belfast at 16, where he worked in nightclubs for a couple of years after leaving school.

There was no background of retail in his family, but Matt caught the greengrocer bug after covering shifts for a friend who worked in a shop in Holywood.

Catching the bug

“The guy that owned the shop said if you want any more work, let me know, and within a few weeks I was basically there full time and I stopped working in nightlife. I then had the opportunity to buy the shop a year and a half later which I took,” he says.

“So I had my first shop at Hills of Holywood on 5th May 2012 and I closed it in about 2016.

It was in Holywood but unfortunately at that time in 2016 there were roadworks and a regeneration project and it took about a year and a half to finish those. I unfortunately only lasted about eight months through it because footfall was depleted and people weren’t actually able to walk down the street because there were no footpaths.”

Matt admits he didn’t give up on the greengrocer dream too readily.

“I had one other shop which was actually The Secret Market as well but it was in the back of a deli and that was where the name came from. Oliver’s Deli on the Belmont Road was just opening and I just went to Peter who owns the shop with the idea.

“That unfortunately only lasted about six months – I went into that selling very obscure fruit, so a lot of dragonfruit and purple cauliflowers and just really exotic stuff. But it wasn’t what the market was looking for on the Belmont Road!”

Lockdown opportunity

After a stint selling cars, Matt went travelling in 2019, arriving home just as the world was starting to unravel with the Covid pandemic.

With the arrival of lockdown, he spotted an opportunity to supply takeaway businesses that were in need of fresh produce supplies.

“With a lot of companies furloughing their staff, any restaurants that wanted to stay open for takeaway couldn’t easily get produce. I did know how to get produce so I just bought a van and started doing deliveries to a couple of restaurants that were doing takeaway,” he says.

“Then we created a website and we were doing home delivery. So we had different fruit packages, vegetable packages, mixed packages and basically from the end of March until probably the end of that summer we were doing up to maybe 40 home deliveries a day – which was good for my sanity because I couldn’t have sat in the house that whole time.

“We just had a small social media platform from The Secret Market so I thought I’ll just use that and go on with it.”

Wholesale supply

While he was doing his deliveries, he was able to grow the amount of wholesale supply, he says.

“The wholesale side is something that we still do to this day and I’ve about 12 bars, golf clubs and restaurants that I supply,” he says.

Matt admits at one stage he swore he would never run another shop. But as the Covid restrictions were lifted, the home delivery side of the business started to wane and he started to reconsider.

“If you’re not doing a sizable amount, say 30 deliveries a day, it may not be cost effective for you to buy the stock.

“I thought if I’m going to continue in this line of work, what do I know how to do? I know how to open a shop so we’ll give it a try.

“One of the main drivers for that was that they had announced there would be no business rates for the calendar year 2021. So if there was ever a chance I was going to be trying to do this again, this was the time to pick, as having a year with no rates is a massive benefit.”

New premises

For his new shop, Matt chose a former hairdressers in Holywood’s High Street, next to Homebrew cafe.

“In the last three months the shop has really come into its own and we have very regular and very loyal customers. I could not be more thankful with how it is. Saturday was our first birthday, so at this stage I really could not ask for more and I really have been thankful at the response.”

Matt says that while they do stock some unusual fruits that you wouldn’t find elsewhere, they focus on the bread and butter items, staying local and within season where possible.

“So we have everything from carrots and potatoes and parsnips to standard root veg to things like samphire which is sea herbs,” he says. “We have some lovely fennel, ready to eat avocados and all the local salad which has just started. I’ve a really good organic farmer, a guy called Dave who runs a company called Picked Organic and he brings us in beautiful organic radishes, Tokyo turnips, lots of different stuff – it’s nice to create a relationship with these farmers and know that they can just bring in whatever they have because their product is so good and it just sells so well.

“We have a little box of stuff in the back that’s on the way out and we’ll offer it to customers – we hate waste essentially. In the shop itself we’re probably just over 80% non-plastic, we use paper bags in here but for some items it’s impossible to sell them not packaged.

Everything loose

“Everything that can be offered loose is offered loose – we either bunch it up or all the boxes are laid out and the customer can buy it loose. It’s very much appreciated by some of my older clientele who maybe live by themselves and don’t want to go into Tesco and buy a bag of carrots that has 20 carrots in it – that’s no good for them.

“The fact that they can come in and get two onions, one carrot and four potatoes for example is very much appreciated for them.”

One of the good things about the business is customers will often share their recipe recommendations for the produce, he says.

“The lovely thing about this shop is that we have a great community feel about us, with such regular customers that you gain a relationship with them.

“I do probably learn more from my customers than from anybody else – I’m very fortunate that we have Michelin star chefs coming in here!

“It’s such a mix of people who walk through this door, which is what I actually love about my job – you really don’t know who’s going to walk in in Holywood. I have good customers and they have good connections and they send them this way.”

Celebrity customers

Matt has even had a brush with a number of big names, both on the celebrity chef scene and the Hollywood scene, as he explains.

“We’ve had Yotam Ottolenghi in here – he has a house in Donaghadee so last year I had the pleasure of dealing with him quite a few times when he was down in the shop.

“I’ve had Game of Thrones actors in here, and two really big American directors producing the Dungeons and Dragons movie – John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Those guys did the Spiderman movie – they’re huge, huge names!

“Through that I’ve been able to get a lot of work supplying… obviously Belfast is just on fire with movie production and filming at the Titanic Studios and I’ve been able to get into a couple of production houses who then use me for any sort of fruit and veg scene.

“So I’m really keenly awaiting Dungeons and Dragons being released because we got to supply a lot of big carrots with the bunches of leaves on them, cabbages, just for all these banquet scenes.”

Anniversary party

Earlier this month saw The Secret Market celebrate its first anniversary with a bit of a party for customers.

“We had all-you-can-drink Prosecco all day, we had strawberries. We started from about 8am in the morning so it was a very long day for myself, having to work through that as well,” Matt laughs.

“I think the first 12 months in any business is probably the hardest and it was a pretty difficult period for any business, so it was really nice to get through that.

“I absolutely couldn’t have done it without the support of my parents. My father’s been a great help in here – he retired at the start of the pandemic and it’s been so nice to spend time with him in here. My mother would do anything I asked her to and my little brother helps out on a Saturday and is great with customers.

“For the next year my sights are just on keeping the head down. I said I was going to put in 100 hours a week until the first year is over but I don’t think there’s any chance of that slowing down! At the minute it’s just myself in here with my father helping me out in the mornings

“I have no plans to change the unit, or expand the size. I love my shop because it’s quite small and quaint and it’s exactly what I need it to be.

“I would like to expand the wholesale side of my business which I made a point of not doing in the first 12 months of the shop because I didn’t want to take on more than I was able to.

“But going forward it’s probably something that I will look to expand, once I get a bigger van. I was in a really bad car crash in September and then another van went on fire about two months ago when I was driving on the motorway so I want to get a more reliable and bigger van and start taking on a little more business when we’re happy we can deal with it.

“But I want to reiterate how thankful I am to all my customers – I really couldn’t be here without them and I hope they all appreciate the quality of the goods that they’re getting!”

To read the full feature, visit Neighbourhood Retailer HERE.

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Charlie Hamilton is delighted with the customer feedback on the mid-pandemic refurbishment of his SPAR store in Castlederg.

“It’s tremendous, I must say – people are saying to me ‘Thank you for providing this for Castlederg’,” he says.

“It’s really a legacy and the store will be there for a long time after me. It’s a fantastic state-of-the-art store. Every device you can mention is in it – we’ve got a very good security camera system in it, we’ve put in the Glory cash handling system front and back of the house, and two self-serve tills, five checkouts, three trolley serves, two quick serves and two self serve units.”

The next step

And he won’t be stopping there, he says.

“The self serve is going 25% of the business plus, so there will be more self serve units in the very near future, I would think. By this time next year I can see me having four of them. That’s where it’s headed because company-owned stores – for one in particular, 38% of the turnover is self-serve and they reckon they’ll have it at 50% by the end of the year.”

Charlie and Ruth Hamilton own three SPAR stores, in Charlie’s home town of Newtownstewart, Omagh and Ruth’s hometown of Castlederg.

Charlie says he was originally encouraged to go into convenience retail by his father in law, farmer Willie Forbes, who spotted a suitable shop for sale in Newtownstewart back in 1979 and suggested the couple take it over.

The pair went on to buy the store in Castlederg in 1994, followed by the Omagh store three years later.

Roots in Castlederg

“Because my wife was from Castlederg, we always had a notion that we’d like to open a shop in Castlederg and in 1994 a site became available, a very good site in the middle of town,” Charlie says.

“It was just an old filling station with a lorry repair business attached to it. The men that owned it were retiring and we were fortunate enough to buy it. In 1994, we got planning permission and built a state of the art 6,000 sq ft building 4,000 sq ft retail.”

Charlie admits the filling station side of the business had been less of a focus, partially because in the 2000s, customers were crossing the border in their droves to buy the cheaper fuel.

“We had fuel, but we sold no amount of it. We just kept it there but it was of no interest to me – there was no money in it.” he says.

“That Castlederg store has done very well and in 2005 we gave it a renovation and added an off licence and generally did whatever we had to do to make it work, extended the storage a bit and then we added in the off licence and refitted the store and put in new shelves and new checkout and all that good stuff.”

Fresh revamp

But as with all his stores, Charlie didn’t like to stand still for long, and a couple of years ago, the couple decided it was time for a fresh revamp, although it took a while to decide what exactly was needed.

“We’d had a good run for a long time, but we wanted to do something more to it,” he says.

“The store was getting tired and was in need of renovation. We needed to make it a bit bigger and we needed to revamp the storage and so on.

“The first building was 6,000 ft so we decided if we redded everything out a bit we’d have a 6,000 sq foot shop and then we could put the hot food and the toilets and the storage at the back.

“Then we started to do the layout and we were like ‘Mmm, still a bit tight’ – so we got another 1,500 sq foot added on there. So now we were looking at a 7500 sq ft job.

Porch area

“And then we decided, what I’d always wanted was a shop with a big porch. Most shop porches are dismal because whenever you get in you can’t even get a dry trolley – they sit out in the rain or somewhere – so I built this porch which is about 700 sq ft.

“I got a really nice porch built, all glass and stone cladding, and then I said to myself ‘I’m spending that much money that I need to make a really good job of this’, so I got in Whittaker and Watt to do the interior design side of it.

“They came in and did the interior design, they designed the ceiling and the lights and the fantasy wooden ceiling effect that we have.

“Then once we decided where everything was going they designed the areas around the hot food area, round the butcher area, the glass and the signage and they made a really first class job of the off licence. It’s all wood and different level lighting and the off licence is spectacular, to be honest.”

Design challenges

Ashley Lamont, of Whittaker and Watt describes the challenges that they faced.

“It was an existing building that was extended and it had difficulties in terms of opportunities in there. The existing roof was poorly insulated so we couldn’t take out the suspended ceiling tiles to open up the roof – we needed to keep a thermal barrier at ceiling level,” he says.

“And we actually developed this new technique with Dougan Contracts Ltd where we used a timber veneer on a suspended ceiling tile system and then created a psychological path around the shop using that material and framed it with the LED lighting in here.

“That really captures you at the entrance doors and makes all the customers turn left.

Then you’re going down the promotional aisle, you’re going to the coffee, you’re going to your deli and the journey takes you on round to the butchery section to the off sales, the ice cream and checkouts. It really completes the whole shopping journey.”

In the pipeline

Work on the store took a year, starting in January 2021, but the project had been in the pipeline for a while, Charlie says.

“We were thinking about doing something with the shop, and then it got bigger and bigger. It was almost ready to go and then the pandemic came in and we just said no for a little while to see what happened,” he says.

“We were sort of starting work in the middle of the pandemic if you think about it. We started in 2021 when the building trade had started to open up again with precautions.

“We built a new building out the back, we moved into it then and renovated the shop, and opened it on the second week in November – that was a low key opening because the off licence still wasn’t sorted out and we had other things to do.”

Pandemic days

Like everyone, they faced a tough time during the early stages of the pandemic, Charlie says.

“We were like everybody else, you were fighting something you couldn’t see and it was really tough.

“The checkout operator and the binman and the bus driver and all the other people that delivered essential services, they never got the recognition that they deserve.

“We cut our hours because we closed earlier – some of the staff came in at 5-6 o’clock in the morning and packed the shop whenever there was nobody in it, and that cut down contact.

You just did as much as you could to try to keep staff safe.

Supporting customers

“We were extremely busy  – because you’re in the off licence business it was unbelievable  , the level of business it did in its own right, and the shops did well.

“The other thing we organised shopping for people – we call it just helping customers. We delivered our groceries to the customers, whatever we could do to help the customers.

The customers really appreciated us stepping up to the mark and making sure the goods were there for them and they didn’t have to come out if they were sheltering..

“I think the other thing is they realised that a SPAR store had a lot more to offer than sometimes they gave them credit for. All of a sudden, there’s a store I could use, and that has stood to a lot of retailers.”

Hot food concept

One of the trends that the Hamiltons have pioneered in their stores has been the hot food concept.

Inspired by retailer John Connolly in Lisnaskea, Charlie decided many years ago to start serving hot food for lunches, including fries and sausage rolls.

“The menu hasn’t really changed that much in all the years – you made a stew, you made spuds, different things, whatever comes along, except that there’s been bits added into it, but the basics are the same,” he says.

“I was the first one in Northern Ireland to have an open fronted mineral cooler. I had this idea that doors were a hold-back to trade so I got Coca Cola persuaded to come along with me. I got the open fronted fridge to see if it worked and I monitored the sales.

Automatic doors

“I was also one of the first retailers to put in automatic doors – you wouldn’t think how important automatic doors are. It’s more if you have children, a woman with prams and pushchairs and stuff trying to push through the door – that’s where I saw the big problem was. We’ve always been very customer aware and customer friendly if possible.”

While the filling station had been a smaller part of the Castlederg business, Charlie decided six years ago to team up with Nicholl Oils and install new pumps with pay-at-the-pump systems.

“When Nicholl Oils took me on I was doing 8,000 litres a week, and then I had the border thing to deal with. Thankfully that has now turned round and we’re pushing 25,000 litres a week now through two pumps, self serve, and it’s working,” he says.

“We’ve expanded dramatically, but we’ve pushed on in fresh food because that’s where the business is and has been for a long time. We’ve got a very strong deli/hot food business and we can run it from 7 in the morning to half four in the afternoon.”

Innovations in store

Charlie says he still has more innovations in mind for the Castlederg store.

“We want to start bringing in self-serve hot food, but we want everything to settle down first. You don’t try to do everything on the first day – I’d rather do it in stages and do it right,” he says.

“But self serve hot food will be the next thing that we’re trying to make work, in whatever format I can.”

He’s also eyeing more changes at the other stores.

“We’re still in the process of planning but I’ve bought a piece of land next door to the supermarket in Newtownstewart and we’re planning to build a brand new state of the art SPAR supermarket in it hopefully next year. That will be the big one – it’s the home site in Newtownstewart,” he says.

To read the full feature in May’s Neighbourhood Retailer, click HERE.

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