A Business In Growth
New stores and refurbishments
We opened five state of the art new stores this year. Our first was in June, located inside Ipswich Station; it was carefully designed to meet the needs of the station’s on-the-go customers. Named by IGD (Institute of Grocery Distribution) as one of 25 global ‘Stores of the Future’ and nominated for ‘Best New Store’ at the Retail Week 2026 awards, our new Ipswich Station store has been a groundbreaking success.
Later in June we opened another new store in Ipswich; Woodbridge Road. We transferred this former car showroom into a brand-new Food store, replacing our former store on Brunswick Road. The roof of the store is fitted with solar panels and it’s home to our first-ever solar car port.
Our three other new stores were also relocations designed to better serve local communities. Our Halstead Travel branch moved to a new modern, easily accessible location and opened in March. We then relocated our East Bergholt Food store in July into a brand-new, modern store in the new Hills Residential housing development. All colleagues from the previous store transferred to the new site, which provides a refreshed, spacious environment for both customers and colleagues. Our final new store opening came in December with the relocation of our Hellesdon Food store to a larger, modern store on Reepham Road, Norwich. As part of this relocation, we opened our brand-new East of England Co-op Travel branch inside the new Food store.
We also completed three major refurbishments, bringing these stores in line with our brand-new stores.
Across the summer we unveiled these three fully refurbished Food stores:
- Holbrook - June
- Capel St Mary - June
- Barham - July
Each of these refurbishments placed an emphasis on improving the food-to-go offering, creating sleek, modern environments to shop in and sustainability upgrades such as LED lighting, cleaner refrigerant gas and in some cases solar panels on roofs.
Our digital transformation
We invested over £600k in a project to replace all our existing Self-Checkouts (SCOs) across our Food store estate with brand-new units from Trust Retail. Creating a more modern look and improved customer experience, they pave the way to improve our shrinkage through in-built camera technology, and include headset integration for colleagues as well as advanced age verification technology.
In October we were recognised for our collaboration with Trust Retail as we took home the award for Technology Implementation of the Year (UK) at the Retail Technology Innovation Hub awards 2025.
Trust Retail implemented five self-checkout terminals at our first fully cashless store at Ipswich Station. This deployment transformed the customer experience for over three million annual passengers, eliminating cash handling entirely whilst streamlining operations.
We completed a major digital upgrade across our funeral operations with the rollout of eFD, a leading funeral management system, designed to enhance efficiency and sustainability, while ensuring we’re ready for any legislative changes. This project marks the start of a wider move towards digitising the funeral arrangement process.
In September we revealed our brand-new website to colleagues. This launch is an important milestone in our digital transformation. As our first customer-facing technology investment in this journey, it modernises our digital presence and provides the platform to better connect with and serve the needs of our members and customers.
