Sharon's c-store diary: New Year resolutions

Sharon Kane, award-winning c-store manager at Spar Cullybackey, part of the Henderson Retail group in Northern Ireland, on healthy eating (or not).

Sharon Kane

New Year, new resolutions. How many people have made a New Year resolution to eat more healthily and exercise more and, realistically, how long do they stick to it?

In my shop in the first few weeks of January the trolleys were filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, salad foods and low fat options galore.

While the sales of these products flourished, the sales of biscuits, cakes and chocolate took a slight drop.

The conversation in store was mainly about joining slimming clubs, exercise classes and walking more in a bid to get fit and healthy for 2009. But then came the snow. We were only two weeks into the New Year and out of the window went salads and healthy options, while sales of our hearty, homemade stew; soup and ready-made dinners went through the roof.

At the same time, sales of biscuits, cakes and chocolates started to climb again.

This could have been for two reasons, however. On the one hand, shoppers could have abandoned their healthy resolutions or they could have finally polished off all the biscuits and chocolate they had left from Christmas.

And, at the end of the day, is there really much point in starting a healthy eating regime when the next two big events of the year are entirely focused around the sales of chocolate.

No sooner have the Christmas decorations and the boxes of chocolates been cleared off our shelves and we’re refilling them with teddy bears, flowers and more chocolates…in preparation for Valentine’s Day.

In our store, men are the main consumers at this time of the year and, traditionally, our sales will soar as they recognise the real way to a woman’s heart is to buy her chocolate.

But will the downturn, which has now turned into a full-blown recession, have an impact on Valentine’s Day sales? Will romance be a victim of the credit crunch? We’ll just have to see what the sales figures show.

Sharon Kane