Early Days

At Horsley Community Shop we are considering selling Lottery Tickets and would like to learn from the experiences of other shops selling these.  Whilst many of our customers would not buy tickets, we think that providing this service will be more socially inclusive and would perhaps encourage new customers from the village and further afield to cross our thresh-hold. 

Jude

We're in the very early stages of considering setting up a community shop. The existing newagents / general store in the village has been for sale for several years, and we're looking into taking it over.

One issue that has been raised is our proximity to major supermarkets - we have a Tesco and a Morrisons, plus town centre shopping, 2 miles away. We wondered if there are other community shops out there that are this close to their competition and have still made a success of it?

We opened a community shop in the village of Hampstead Norreys, Berkshire, on 26^th March 2011.  So far the shop is proving popular – with a good socio-economic mix of local and nearby villagers as well as passing trade using the shop.

I'm the chairman of the Uley village committee looking at the replacement of our existing shop when it closes next year with a new community shop.  The existing shop combines shop premises with owner accommodation.  The owners have offered to rent the shop part to the community on what would be a 5 year lease.  The option would be very attractive to us - the shop is in the ideal location in the village.  However, they are proposing a rental figure of £1500 a month - that for a shop which I'd guess is 300-400 sq ft in area.

We've been offered use of land in the village hall car park to set up a community shop. The land belongs to the Parish Council and the shop would be adjacent to the village hall. The Village Hall Committee and the Parish Council are keen that we have a number of things in place - 

Hi there,

I am at the moment in the process of setting up a community run shop within a church, we have been lucky enough to secure some funding already and so I was looking into opening a bank account with the co-op who offer free banking. They informed me that for part of the application we will need a "constitution" , I wondered whether others have already written theres and whether they would be willing to share it , as I am not sure in what depth the constitution at this stage needs to be.

Many thanks

Sam Moore

Beech Hill Village Shop

We are starting to build a new shop and want to include a bread oven, but need further advice from people who have experience of using one. How successful is it, is it profitable, what products do you use etc.etc.?

Buckland Brewer residents will be putting their money on the line as part of a community shop fund raising event on Saturday 24 July. Shop supporters in the North Devon village are being encouraged to donate their change by filling the outline of the proposed community shop, which will replace the post office and general store that closed in March 2009. The coin trail takes place at the Buckland Brewer Methodist Church between 10.30 am and 1.30 pm. Shop committee chairman Peter McClymont says: “Losing our local shop last year was a blow to the community.

Seven years ago in the Pennine village of Midgley, the PO gave us a grant to reopen our village Post Office. In 2008, they decided to close it down as part of their rationalisation programme! We are now moving to new premises, an old Co-op building in the village, where we can have both our community shop and a community room.

Does anyone have experience of running a sub postoffice either exclusively or partially with volunteers? If so how have you mananged the payment from the Post Office to the sub postmaster?