Store Openings: One Stop

Franchisee opens 14th store

Wilson brothers breath new life into the Jolly Farmers pub in North Yorkshire.

Retailing brothers Daniel and Craig Wilson have opened their 14th One Stop store in Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees.

The Wilsons have breathed new life into the Jolly Farmers, a much-loved community pub, which had fallen into disrepair in recent years.

The brothers have opened at least one store every year since they joined One Stop in 2015. Daniel said: “If I see an interesting site, I’ll go and visit it, or even just use Google maps to get an idea. If it looks good, then One Stop will run a demographic report for us. This enables us to look at various things from how much housing there is in the area to if there are workers close by.”

The Wilsons believe they have developed a good model with One Stop, which lends itself well to running lots of different sites, with automatic ordering that allows staff to focus on managing the stores and serving customers.

Daniel added: “We have some local produce, a reasonable but not over-complicated food-to-go range, and a similar model for all our sites. I’ve put in an experienced manager who helps us oversee the stores and looks through the automatically generated orders. She will check them to see if we have seasonal products, and make sure that everything looks right, it’s all very straightforward.

“The promotions in-store are great. We don’t price adjust anything; we’re happy with how One Stop run the pricing and we’re comfortable with the margins we get, and we still remain competitive in the market.”

The brothers now plan to open another two stores in quick succession. “We’ve got three stores opening up and lots of refits going on. We’re also moving one or two stores to double their size and then we’ve got a busy tourist season to look forward to,” Daniel said.