Q&As

The majority of our stores are convenience format and space is limited. Our range is determined by the buying group, we try to have an offering of vegan products in our stores but have to balance this with lower demand and food waste. We'll pass your product suggestions onto our food team/buying group for consideration.

We’ve just held Love Local Fortnight in May, where we had some excellent promotions in store of all the local suppliers. It's a really important commitment that we will continue to do more with. We have a trading arm and a local buyer who are tasked with making sure that we source as much as we can locally, and we're looking to streamline that process to make it easier for local suppliers to get their range in store. Strategically it's a big opportunity for us moving forward and one that is high on the agenda.

Alongside Tate and Lyle, we do stock Silver Spoon sugar which is sourced from British Sugar. We work very closely with the co-op group, which provides the majority of our ranges in store, but our local buyer will be working with us going forward to try and make sure we get that balance right. We’re happy to be flexible and recognise what our customers want us to be ranging in our stores.

The majority of our stores are convenience format and space is limited. Our range is determined by the buying group, we try to have a good offering of fresh produce in our stores but have to balance this with demand and food waste. We'll pass your product suggestions onto our food team/buying group for consideration.

We are adopting new ways of working, so that we can concentrate our resources on providing other important NHS services. Moving some of the dispensing to a central fill system, at our Pharmacy warehouse, helps us ease the load on our colleagues and frees up time for them to spend with patients.

Central fill uses recycled plastic bags to allow us to group medicines together and seal the bags more efficiently for accuracy and patient confidentiality. When we came to introduce the system, this was an element we considered carefully, including working with our sustainability team. Using 100% recycled plastics for the bags reduces the need for resources which would be used to generate new plastics and prevents the plastic from going to landfill. These bags can also be recycled through soft plastic recycling services, such as those collection points in our food stores.

In terms of the soft plastics recycling in our stores, this is a scheme run by the Co-op Group. Soft plastics recycled in our stores are sent to a UK recycling partner who sorts the material and makes it into items such as carrier bags, garden waste sacks, bin bags and secondary packaging.

We are very keen to update our membership app, and as part of the strategy we are developing an IT road map.

There are lots of things that need developing in terms of the society's infrastructure. The membership technology is something we’re really keen to develop it. There’s lots of functionality we'd like to add to the app, such as use through Apple Wallet, similar to other apps and unique to Co-op as well. We are really keen to do it, it just has to be in the right order considering other technological updates that we need to focus on.

Around 292,000 members, and we also have a good number of children added to accounts. We have a number of closures every year of people who don't use their account during a three-year period, but we also have a similar number that tend to join us each year, so the number is slowly growing, but tends to remain reasonably around that that figure.

This half year, our sales have shown an increase of 6.4% on the same period of the past financial year. We have traded above budget by 2.7%.

But, there have been challenges in parts of our business, including inflation and an increase in personnel costs. Our trading surplus, though ahead of budget by £246,000, is £4.7m, £1.3m behind last year’s position.

We will continue to push forward and improve our performance as a business in the second half, but our surplus will still be reduced on previous years. As surpluses reduce, like last year, we will have to review the amount we share with member in dividend bonus.

Find out more in our half year report.

We know that members would like to see additional features on the app including wallet integration and biometric security. Upgrading our app is on our development roadmap and we will share progress on this with members when we can.

This year’s event was really popular once we shared the Center Parcs location. We've had a number of people who've said it’s brilliant we've held it at Center Parcs, and some people who were disappointed that they couldn't get a ticket due to how quickly spaces booked up.

There’s a number of questions on this year’s meeting location, so please give us your feedback on the event, good or bad, because we review all survey feedback afterwards. Then there's a membership board committee that will decide on the event schedules in the future.

In terms of member events in general, the meetings are really important, but it is a significant cost to put them on, so we have to balance that with how much dividend we can give out and other benefits as well. The board committee decides on how we distribute the member award both through dividend, other offers and promotions throughout the year, and the events that we can put on.

The cost of moving this event from Lincolnshire Showground to Center Parcs is on a par. During the meeting, we shared some information on our dividend offer and the price investment we are making on frequently bought items.

We have to look at things on an individual basis and some of those stores unfortunately were struggling to turn a profit, and that is why we passed those over to a different company, to take those on and start to deliver those services for those local communities. We are not abandoning the Grimsby area, as we have two new stores opening before the end of the year, in Laceby and Scartho. We’ll continue to look at that area and see where there are further opportunities.

Our business strategy is about driving growth for Lincolnshire

Co-op. Following the work that we've been doing with a location data science company, we’ll be continuing to look for further opportunities.

They are starting with our food business, and then moving to look at things from a pharmacy perspective, a funeral perspective etc. However, we always have to review individual sites and look at profitability and whether they’re fit for purpose.

We are always looking for new sites to grow our business and have been working with a data science company to plan the next 3 years of store openings. We'll pass your suggestion on to our property team for consideration.

We did market Churchill Drive for sale, but in summer last year, we took it off the market.

We are continuing to look at a range of options for Churchill Drive Food Store and Post Office with the intention of sustaining the service for the community.

We are currently investing in the store to introduce new services like Costa Express and Tango Ice Blast, as well as some adaptations to deter anti-social behaviour, including a CCTV camera. We have also engaged with the local council and police team on ASB.

We are a disability confident employer, which is recognition we've received from the DWP. In our workplace the number of colleagues who shared their underlying health conditions with us and their disabilities rose considerably during covid, and we've done everything we can to support them.

We have a defined Occupational Health provider, Bupa, but we've also worked with the Business Disability Forum to understand both what we can do for both our colleagues and also our customers in our trading environments. We employ our own Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisor to support the business in how it deals with all its stakeholders, to ensure our approach is robust, relevant and meets their needs.

For most of our colleagues our annual review date is April each year and for a small number it's September. During the half year from September 23 to March 24, we had the national living wage increase. We pay above the national living wage, so all of our rates and allowances increased to reflect that.

Personnel cost isn't a like for like figure, due to individual circumstances and different roles, so that's why you'll see a mix of increase in personnel costs.

In terms of the C-suite (roles that start with the word Chief, and the Directors), details of the Executive Leadership Team’s remuneration are included in the annual report, which is published at the end of each calendar year, reflecting the end of our financial year, which is September. It also includes updates on the Director's remuneration, and during the meeting we’ve approved changes to that as part of the voting.