Spar retailer Eat 17 snaps up My Local site

Spar retailer Eat 17 has snapped up a My Local site in Whitstable.

The new store will open on Wednesday 20 July - just three weeks after My Local went into administration and Eat 17 closed the sale.

My Local Whitstable’s 11 members of staff will all remain under the new management.

“We are really excited to be able to acquire this site,” said Eat 17 owner James Brundle.

“Whitstable is a great fit for our brand - the perfect mix of tradition and trendiness. This new Spar store will include a great range of ambient, fresh, chilled, BWS and tobacco products alongside loads of local suppliers and will offer PayPoint and Lottery.”

The store will follow a similar concept to Eat 17 branches in Walthamstow and Hackney in range and PoS and will stock an additional 1,800 local and regional products, as well as Spar own-label and everyday essentials.

The 3,200 sq ft site will initially open purely as a convenience store and will not undergo any major layout changes until late August, when a locally sourced serve-over ice cream parlour will open.

The store also has a further two storeys above the convenience operation, which may be developed into a bar or restaurant concept in the future, suggested AF Blakemore, whose franchise arm Blakemore Trade Partners oversaw the sale.

“There’s a lot of potential for the upstairs space but we don’t know exactly what route we’re going to go down with it,” said AF Blakemore development manager George Duffy.

“Down in Whitstable, oysters are huge so there is potential to get oyster tanks in there. We’re not exactly sure yet but we’ll definitely be doing something different.”

Blakemore Trade Partners is looking at four other sites for Eat 17 in the London area and aims to have a 10-strong store estate in the next few years.

“The Spar and Eat 17 brands have proven to work successfully and flawlessly alongside each other since the concept first opened in 2010,” said Blakemore Trade Partners director Neil Mercer, “The business has moved on to the next stage and we are very excited about the future.”