Super Value: Sales ‘holding steady’

Super Value: Sales ‘holding steady’
Super Value, Baillou Hill Road.

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Super Value’s president Rupert Roberts said yesterday the sales within his grocery store chain were ‘holding steady’ and had not tampered off as expected, noting that there has been a five to ten per cent increases in sales of hand sanitizers and household cleaning supplies.

Roberts told Eyewitness News, “It’s not tapered off. People are still spending. We were expecting it to fall off but it really hasn’t. I expect it to stay up for a while. I had expected it to fall off after a couple of weeks but it hasn’t. Comparing it to last year I think there are more people in town from Abaco and Grand Bahama. I think that has more to do with it, the increase in consumers here on New Providence.”

Roberts added, “We have seen a 5-10 per cent increase in sales of hand sanitizers and cleaning supplies. Due to the the pandemic people are spending more on those things.”

Roberts said he was keeping his eye on reports of supply shortages, pointing to reports on rice shortages. “That is something that could be a disaster for us locally. We stocked up on rice when we heard that. The tissue market is steady. There was a time when that was hard to get but we have been able to keep up the supply. As it relates to pork, we have checked with our suppliers. The pork shortage is in the US. We have checked with our suppliers in Brazil and Denmark and they say they are ok.”

Roberts said his food store chain now has a three month supply of grocery items. “Now we have been able to get a three months supply. We don’t foresee any problems. Consumers were buying more and the supply chain was shorter so we couldn’t get three months supply before no matter how hard we tried.  I took three months to build up three months worth of inventory. I don’t foresee anything impacting that but I hope we don’t have anything that runs that down.”