Spar: support through thick and thin

MARY Forde’s Spar store on Main Street in Tallow, Co. Waterford, was extensively damaged by a fire in November 2022. Smoke damage was so significant that the interior of the shop had to be gutted and Mary was left staring at four empty walls, that had previously been filled with the sights and sounds of a busy local shop. Although the damage was very significant, not once did Mary even consider closing the business, especially given the extraordinary support she was receiving from Spar, her symbol group partner.

The Forde family have had a retail presence in Tallow for more than a century. Mary’s grand-uncle, Paddy Forde opened the business back in 1911, establishing a local shop with a bakery, and the business has thrived since. Mary’s father, John Forde, was the kind of progressive retailer that helped standards in the convenience grocery retail sector in Ireland to soar, and was one of the first Irish grocers to join the then brand new Spar group some 60 years ago, back in 1963, the year the group began opening shops in Ireland for the first time.

Growing up on the shop-floor

As with the children of many shop-owners, Mary was introduced to the business at a relatively young age, helping her Dad out, learning how the business ran and developing a love for running a local shop. She worked with her Dad until 1999, when she took over the shop. At that stage, Forde’s had been trading ‘Under The Tree’ for well over three decades and Mary was very happy to continue working with the symbol group partner.

“Spar have always been great to work with,” she tells Retail News “In 2016, we made a significant investment in a revamp of the shop, which went extremely well and really moved the shop to another level. We traded very successfully for a number of years until the pandemic started. I have always found Spar great to work with, but during a crisis like the pandemic, we really came to appreciate just how hard the group works to support its retail partners.”

Describing the pandemic as “a truly extraordinary event”, Mary explains how it “transformed the way the shop functioned in the community, making us one of the only places people could engage in even the most basic social actions and as a frontline business, it was one of the only places our customers could stock up on vital supplies. Right from the outset of the pandemic, Spar were fantastic, providing support and advice at a time when that was exactly what we all needed. The pandemic made our relationship with our customers closer than it had ever been and we would not have been able to do that without the constant support and attention we received from Spar.”

Incredible support

With the business having survived a global pandemic, and emerging stronger than it had been before the event, Mary and her staff were looking forward to a period of relative calm, but that calm was shattered on a November night last year when fire struck the shop and devastated the interior of the building. Once again, her symbol group partner proved an invaluable source of strength and support for Mary and her business.

“I was in shock,” she remembers. “The fire was not large enough to damage the structure of the building but the smoke damage meant that nothing inside the shop was salvageable. I have to say that from the moment he learned about the fire, Roy O’Mahony [Retails Operations Advisor, Spar] was just amazing. He stepped up and provided incredible support to us. We had put in a lot of time and investment in 2016 to update the shop and all that hard work was undone in just one night. But I never felt I was facing this alone, because I was not. The entire team at Spar were ready to help us.”

The shop was closed from November of 2022 until May of 2023 to allow for repairs and revamp. Since reopening, business has been extremely busy. “While we had relatively recently revamped the shop, this event gave us the opportunity to bring the shop bang up-to-date with the latest image and introduce a real ‘Wow’ factor,”

Fact File:

Owner: Mary Forde

Location: Main Street, Tallow, Co. Waterford

Size: 1,400 square feet retail space

No. of Staff: 9, full time & part time

Opening Hours: 07:00-21:00, Monday-Saturday; 08:00-20:00, Sunday

Mary explains. “Our customers were absolutely delighted to have their shop open again and they were stunned by how good the new shop looks.”

Loyal and dedicated staff Mary also pays tribute to the hard work, loyalty and dedication of their staff, who were delighted to return to work when the shop re-opened: ”We have extremely good staff working with us, with Una and Sharon even helping out during the revamp process. This was an extremely difficult event for us to come through, and I really do believe that we could not have survived this if we had been fully independent. It was the strength of our partner and all the team at Spar that helped us survive this challenge and with their support, we are looking to keep serving the people of Tallow for years to come.”

The Tallow store is one of the oldest operating Spar shops on the island. The partnership between Spar and the Forde family has been a successful one for six decades, and it looks set to continue for years to come.