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The economic downturn has failed to halt growth in the UAE’s
convenience store sector, with sales during the first four months of
this year up by 11 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Piyush Mathur, Nielsen’s regional managing director for the Middle
East, who produced the research said: “People still need to eat, they
still need to drink.” Mr Mathur said, the growth rate has slowed
sharply compared to last year, when convenience store sales in the
first four months of 2008 grew by 26 per cent compared with the same
period in 2007.
Emarat, which has just launched a new convenience store, Freshplus, are
up 3 per cent so far this year, a figure that includes petrol
purchases. Darren Smith, Retail Manager of Emarat said the fall
in the UAE’s population has shortened the queue of cars waiting to get
on to the service stations, queues which had previously discouraged
potential customers, he said. “We think that people are choosing to use
us because they don’t have to queue like they did in the past.
When you look around, the roads of Dubai, much quieter than used to be,
but still our sales are doing well. They’re quite robust. I think
that’s because we mainly supply items that people eat. They snack on
the go.”
Emarat opened its first Freshplus outlet at Business Central Towers,
Dubai, at the beginning of this month. Four more are planned for
this year. The company also plans to open more outlets in other
Gulf countries through franchising, Mr Smith said.
24 Seven is also looking at expanding outside of Dubai. Initially in
Qatar and Kuwiat. Martin Pointon, the operational director
of the convenience store chain 24 Seven, said its 14 outlets in Dubai
have the same number of customers, but the spending per person had gone
down by roughly 10 per cent this year.
Convenience store retail in the region will continue to grow. According
to some analysts, this could be as high as 40% over the next five years.
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