Best New Store Award winner – Broughton Market Edinburgh
Winner details
Staff: 14 staff members
Suppliers: Total Produce, Nisa
Services: Butchery counter, coffee and food to go, Christmas food on order
- Previously Crombie’s of Edinburgh, the butcher’s expanded to become a destination store including a range of fruit vegetables and wide array of other fresh produce that comes straight from the farm.
- The store continues to make use of its butcher’s counter in store, bringing in customers with its array of meats and ready-made meals all freshly prepared on site.
- Broughton New Market remains keen on a ‘from farm to table’ mentality, with chillers across the store well stocked with freshly made produce, including ice creams from a farm in Northumberland.
- In addition to catering to the everyday need for shoppers, the store also organises its own Christmas food-to-order range, where customers can have their entire Christmas dinner sorted out in one store.
Convenient expansion into grocery
AFTER more than 50 years of sticking to one business concept, making an ambitious change to your store could be an intimidating prospect.
But this opportunity has more than paid off for Broughton Market Edinburgh, as the store has embraced its expansion into convenience with open arms.
Formerly the butcher Crombie’s of Edinburgh, store owner Yommana Crombie introduced a wider variety to the business to turn it into more of a destination option for her customers, helping to bring in more top-up shop missions with a wide array of dinner options in the store.
With help from Nisa and shop fitters Barbours, the team at Broughton has ensured the revamp can meet a variety of consumer demands while also helping to bring something new to the table as well.
And keeping the butcher’s counter in the store as well has really paid off, as both Crombie and store manager Wayne Anderson believe that it helps to keep the store more unique when compared with other convenience shops.
Crombie said: “To start off, my holy grail is still the butcher’s – we still focus on the butcher and we have never changed that.
“Even with our deal with Nisa, we never buy their meat, it has to all be our own Scottish meat because that’s our heritage.
“So when it came to creating the idea for Broughton Market, it was about extending this idea of: When people buy meat from a butcher, they typically have to go somewhere else to buy vegetables, alcohol and anything else they need to make a up their meal.”
The concept for the store kicked off when their elderly customers would visit the store while it was still Crombie’s and would note that it was more of a challenge for them to visit both the supermarket and the butcher’s for one meal when a lot of local transport had been restricted.
From that idea, Crombie’s expanded to become Broughton Market in February 2022, with the new store officially opening in the March.
Crombie explained: “We wanted it to be a one-stop service, and so we extended to meet that demand. But we also still wanted to ensure that everything we stocked was still fresh produce and could be sourced back to the farm.”
And it’s clear to see how fresh this store is from the moment you step in. The butchery counter remains at the back of the store, where customers can still get fresh cuts of meat or can buy it pre-packaged from the chillers.
On top of this, the store also keeps in an array of fresh farm-sourced products, including ice creams from a farm in Northumberland.
While the store’s expansion into the convenience game has to be commended, it remains clear just how much the staff’s experience of running a butcher’s has benefited the entire store now, as it continues to offer a Christmas food-to-order service, which now includes all the trimmings.
Anderson said: “It’s about six months of preparations and ends in about three days of organised chaos with the orders we have in.
“Just for last Christmas, we had over 2,500 orders all in our one store. This year, we did everything you could need for a Christmas dinner plate as well including the different meats, vegetables, wine and big hampers. It was a lot of work but it was great.
“We even had to stop serving lunch in store just to make sure we could keep up with demand and ensure we could keep everyone’s food fresh for pick-up.”
Even with spring just arriving, Anderson was already gearing up for this year’s preparations – looking to meet every consumer demand for vegan and vegetarian options as well as specialist items including Christmas hummus and, of course, a good selection for the cheese board, too.
Christmas is far from the only event the store focuses on, with plenty of food-themed theatre created across the store to help boost up some promotions, with display of potatoes helping to bring attention to crisp deals in store or a basket of tomatoes to show off the new ambient food jars that have just been brought in.
And this theatre spreads to online spaces as well, as the entire team at Broughton are always keen to take part in the latest social media trends and show off a more fun side to the store and emphasise the people behind the counters.
With the store now celebrating their first year in business, Crombie continues to keep one eye on the horizon for the business and is constantly looking out for ways to continue to expand the store.
Crombie said: “I think, for the future of the store, we might look into what other niches or specific areas we could expand into and how we can meet a new demand.
“In particular, I think we want to look into how we can bring in some more fresh produce for the store.
“For example, over the past year, we brought in a fresh cheese section to our chillers that is all local and the owner of the cheese helps us to stock up on it when he comes into the store.
“Another thing that happened this year was we bought in ice creams directly from the farm where they are made. So while we have recognisable brands in our freezers, we also have more locally sourced options.
“So, I think for the future, we will look to bring in as many local products as we can, whether that be Scottish or UK-wide.”
