Booths sees festive sales rise
NORTH West supermarket chain Booths has seen an 8.4% increase in sales for the 12 trading days of Christmas and New Year, with like-for-like sales over the festive period up by 2.5%.
Despite a tightening economy and bad weather hitting footfall in some shops the family-owned Lancashire company, which has 26 stores across the North, said it achieved good product availability with increased customer interest in high quality local food and drink.
The company, which was founded in 1847, said demand for premium products had been high and there was particularly strong sales on beer, wine and spirits.
Booths also saw record sales of turkeys and roast meats following its first year offering an online pre-order service for fresh roasting meat and poultry.
Chris Dee, trading director at Booths says: “2009 has been a challenging year, especially towards the end of the year when severe weather conditions affected a number of our stores across the two week period.
“We are pleased with the results and continue to be competitive on prices, whilst maintaining the quality of our offer.”
The majority of the Preston-based company’s stores are in Lancashire and Cumbria, but it has three sites in Yorkshire and one at Knutsford, Cheshire.
In November Booths showed it had been able to overcome the downturn as it increased profits for the year to April 2009 by 8.7% to £7.5m on sales up 3% to £254m.
