In fact, the focus on deli was all down to a chicken curry recipe that proved to be a huge draw at Casey’s Londis Castlebar, the first of the five stores in the group, as managing director David Tarrant explains.

“They had a lady, Kitty Common, who started with them when they opened the store in 1996 and she had a great chicken curry recipe. She started making her own chicken curry and her rice and her chips and a few bits and pieces and it became very, very popular,” he explains.

“So Gerry said to himself ‘There’s something here’. There were a lot of people coming in every day for the curry and would come in for their lunches, but she was the starting point for it all and it just grew and grew.

“If you go in now the range is huge and we’re very proud of it, but it all started with one person and one recipe.”

Foodservice operators

These days Caseys would describe themselves as foodservice operators with a shop and forecourt attached.

“Everything we do instore is to support the food and foodservice team. Through our energetic, passionate people and market leading brands we aim to exceed our customers’ expectations through friendly professional customer service,” David says.

“We aim to deliver a vast and varied range of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and food to go options under one roof appealing to all ages, time of day and to all different tastes.”

The Castlebar forecourt alone sells approximately 3,000 dinner solutions a week across the Kitchen@Caseys, Freshly Chopped and Four-Star Pizza brands.

“We sell approx. 1,500 plated meals, 300 grab and go Kitchen@Caseys Dinners, 700 Freshly Chopped lunches and 500 large pizzas – not including sides, meal deals, sandwiches, rolls etc.”

Identifying a site

Originally in the car business, Gerry Casey identified a site 24 years ago which he felt could potentially make a successful forecourt for Castlebar, and partnered with Shell to open the store. When he put in the deli, it proved hugely popular and soon began to grow.

“We’ve really built it into a substantial food business. Kitchen@Caseys is our named deli concept – obviously we have the grocery and the off licence, but our business is mainly built around the food,” Mr Tarrant says.

“The store is now 5,000 square feet, employing 70 staff. We seat 60 people indoor and 40 outdoor, offering hot freshly prepared food from 6AM to midnight.

“We have up to 12 traditional meal options daily – beef, salmon, bacon and cabbage, turkey and ham, beer battered fish & chips plus a few different dishes for the more adventurous. We do it to a very high standard and that’s what we’ve built our name on. It’s restaurant quality but it’s in a forecourt and is reasonably priced. That’s our number one driver that drives the whole business.

Fresh franchises

“We originally had the deli and then in 2017 we added Chopped – they’re franchises but we run them ourselves. We added Four Star a year later to cover the evening business – we close the deli in the evening and we’re open until midnight so the pizza covers that side of the business.

“We also have our own scratch bakery in Castlebar so we make all our own breads which is fairly unique for a forecourt.”

The forecourt itself was originally Shell before becoming Statoil, then Topaz, and now Circle K: “We’re very happy with it – we have a very good relationship with Circle K. We have four forecourts and they’re very busy.

“The business will soon be installing new pumps and the forecourt is to be relined, we currently have parking for fifty customers but there are no plans to expand that end of the business.

“It was built bigger than was required at the time so it’s absolutely fine for our needs now,” Mr Tarrant says.

The store itself offers a full range of grocery, dairy and chill, with crisps and snacks, soft drinks, health and beauty and off licence.

Bewley’s concept

One of the newest features is the Bewley’s concept which was installed just before Christmas.

“We would be very passionate about our coffee and we wanted to add the new plant-based coffee concept,” Mr Tarrant says.

“So, when you go into Castlebar, the new unit is five metres in length and it’s all coffee stations and one of them is dressed up green – it’s the Alpro plant-based milk.

“The concept of Bewleys is rolling out across the country and we have it in three of our stores now. They will become commonplace over the next few years, but I think we’re the second shop in Ireland to put it in.

“We’ve a lot of customers for it – it’s a different concept, a different tasting coffee and it’s fabulous. It’s a nice feature and we’ve had a very positive response to it.”

When the pandemic arrived, forecourt turnover plunged by about 80%, Freshly Chopped closed for about six weeks, but the deli and Four Star remained open for food to go.

“We went from about 200 staff to 120 overnight – that was due to lockdowns, schools being closed, childminders,” Mr Tarrant says.

Pandemic response

“Our business fluctuated greatly but we maintained our deli business through very difficult times.

“The only people who were busy in the pandemic were the supermarkets or online retailers and everybody else was challenged. Customer numbers were way back, as nobody was going out and we had the 5K restrictions which made travel difficult for staff and customers alike.

“It was very, very challenging but we got through it and I think the government got it right in everything they did. I must say I think they should be commended over the two years – whether they supported business or supported people at home, I think everything they did was right. And our staff were brilliant – they got us through it.

“They had to do more with less because the team shrank. But the requirements were still the same. We were still selling groceries, we were still selling alcohol, we were still selling deli, we were still selling ready meals.

Delivery service

“We have a delivery service for pizza, but in the middle of the pandemic we introduced a delivery service for all the shops for people who needed anything. We did it more for our local customers who needed essentials brought to the house or were nervous to come out or wanted a bag of coal or wanted their dinner.

“So, it was very much a service, rather than a revenue generator. We have some older customers, so we wanted to be able to contact them and they wanted to be able to contact us and we provided that service for six months at the start of the pandemic as required.”

The chain took action very quickly in March 2020, installing screens and signage before they were required to, he says.

“We very much had a Covid policy and Covid point of sale presence in the shops early. By the end of March, we had the arrows and the lines, the two-metre rule, we cleaned down the pumps and used gloves and sanitizers and cleaned down the coffee stations after use. There was a lot to be done quickly so we had to bring a lot of people onto the floor to sanitise everything.

“But it was the right thing to do and it gave all of our customers confidence and that brought us back in April and May because people weren’t seeing the same elsewhere.”

New revamp

The Castlebar store is all set for a revamp in the next couple of months, including putting in a new first fresh food aisle to showcase the grab and go ranges.

“We pride ourselves on our strong commercial partnerships with BWG Foods, Aryzta Foods, Freshly Chopped, Four Star Pizza, Supermacs and Bewleys who all share in our vision and very much work closely with us on all aspects of obtaining our shared goal,” Mr Tarrant says.

The size of the off licence will be trebled, similar to the recent revamp in Ballina which now has three metres of backlit spirits.

Proud of campaign

Meanwhile the company is rolling out its Caseys ‘Proud of’ campaign for 2022 with the tagline: ‘We are so proud of what we do we want to share it with you.’

Across the five stores in Castlebar, Ballina, Galways, Limerick and Newbridge, Caseys employs around 200 people and is proud of its working environment.

“We had a lot of newcomers when we added some of the food concepts in Castlebar but a lot of the staff are there for years and they take them under their wing. It’s a very positive environment and we’re very proud of that,” Mr Tarrant says.

“We have a very, very loyal cohort of staff, very few people leave us and the staff got us through Covid.

“We’re very busy and they’re very busy in turn, so it’s a fast-paced place to work – we have good fun but we’re busy people.

“I could always do with more staff, but I don’t have the same challenges with labour at the moment as some of my fellow retailers. I’ve a great management team, I’ve great staff in the store, I’ve a lot of people who are multiskilled and interchangeable, so if somebody steps out, somebody else can step in – that’s what has kept us together.

“Now that we’re coming out of Covid, thankfully, business is very strong and we’re very happy with the way things are going.”

To read the article in IFCR, click HERE.

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“When I started out, forecourts were what you called garages, they were where you got your puncture fixed,” he says. “What’s happened over many years is that shops have become prevalent on forecourts and they’ve developed into foodservice outlets.

“Now you’re meeting a whole different need – your shopping missions and your eating missions have converged. That’s a huge change over the last 20 to 30 years.”

Musgrave is keen to be at the forefront of the transformation of the forecourt industry.

“People aren’t no longer stopping just to fuel their cars. They are now stopping to fuel their bodies with breakfast, lunch, dinner and so on,” Mr McCormack says.

“One of Musgrave’s visions is to provide world-class food and beverage solutions and deliver a market-leading experience every day to the customers that we serve, across all of our businesses in retail, foodservice and wholesale. We are working closely with our forecourt partners and our retailers to ensure their offerings are world-class.”

Emergence of electric

The emergence of electric vehicles is set to change the raison d’etre of the forecourt even further, says Mr McCormack, who can boast a strong pedigree in the forecourt industry thanks to his work at Musgrave and his previous career with Statoil.

“As we look forward, with the emergence of electric vehicles, a lot of that charging will be done at home, as well as in work, so the job for these forecourts is to innovate in the way they feed people”.

Originally from Dublin and now living in the village of Holywood close to Belfast, Mr McCormack didn’t come from a family tradition of retail.

“I started out originally in finance and was seconded into a company called Statoil which is the state-owned Norwegian business that had a downstream business in Ireland. They had a distribution business for fuel but also they licensed a lot of retail outlets that they owned to licensees,” he says.

“I was seconded in to help them when they were incubating a company-owned operation, effectively starting up a kind of a retail business, trying to use the assets that they had and turn them into effective shops that they would run and operate. That’s how I ended up getting into retail.”

Shop concept

After he was appointed Head of Category and Concept Development, he found himself focusing on developing the shop concept across Statoil in Ireland, before moving to Oslo to become vice president for customer offer.

He returned to Ireland after a call from Musgrave – the role of Trading Director had just come up. He had first got to know the company in Ireland in his role as a customer of Musgrave with Statoil.

“I was hugely impressed with the people that I had engaged with in Musgrave, a sixth generation Irish-owned company,” he says.

He came in as Trading Director for the wholesale business, before taking over the wholesale business in Northern Ireland, later to become Managing Director.

His major projects included rolling out concept work developed in the Republic into Northern Ireland, including the next generation Centra, the Frank and Honest coffee concept and developing the Mace brand.

“We developed the Musgrave MarketPlace brand on the wholesale side, we developed the SuperValu, Mace and Centra brands on the retail side and then we bought Drinks Inc. which is an alcohol distribution business,” Mr McCormack says.

“Musgrave is a fantastic place to advance your career. I was Managing Director of Musgrave Northern Ireland for a number of years and then two years ago I became Managing Director of the wholesale and foodservice division in the Republic of Ireland. My main role as MD of the wholesale business is in the Republic but I have executive responsibility still for Northern Ireland, and I also have responsibility for the fledgling product export business.”

Wholesale development

The wholesale side of the business has developed substantially over the last couple of years. More than €30 million has been invested between the wholesaler supplier Musgrave MarketPlace and Daybreak, a convenience retailer brand, in recent years.

“In Musgrave MarketPlace we’ve reinvented the offer and also developed our foodservice credentials. We’re just about to launch a digital platform. Digital is key in the current climate so our focus is on becoming the Amazon for business to business,” Mr McCormack says.

The company currently has 269 Daybreak stores, after adding 40 new stores in the past two years alone, and a new design concept is being rolled out across the network.

“We invested in the Daybreak shop brand a number of years ago and developed a new concept that included sub-brands such as Munch & Co, Lickety Split, 9 Grams Coffee. In recent years we have focused on rolling that out and meeting the changing needs of the consumer. There has also been huge focus on developing the Centra and SuperValu brands. You’ve got to constantly move with the consumer so we’re always looking ahead.”

Pandemic priorities

When the pandemic hit, Musgrave was in a good place but the top priority was to look after customers and colleagues by investing in safety measures, Mr McCormack says.

“We’re very conscious of the position we have in the food supply chain in Ireland. It’s been a very difficult time for everyone but we recognise our responsibility to keep food on the table because we feed one in three people on the island of Ireland every day,” he says.

“It was really about putting our shoulders to the wheel and trying to keep people safe, but at the same time recognising that we had a job to do, to keep food on the table for people who were struggling due to Covid. So that was our primary focus, to keep people safe and keep the food supply chain operational.”

Food chain changes

And that food chain has changed as a result of the pandemic, not just with the shift to online shopping, Mr McCormack says.

“A lot more people were working from home which meant that where people ate changed – a shift from urban to rural for example, so we had to adapt as a business to take account of that,” he says.

“The hospitality sector was the most impacted by Covid and our job was to try and support them. For example, we opened our cash and carry businesses for longer opening hours to support our customers.”

Musgrave realised that demand from hospitality customers was likely to be more erratic with confusion over when restrictions would be put in place or lifted.

“We opened the cash and carry for longer to help them to cope with those demands and we continued to work with our customers to understand their current needs so that we could adapt to meet them.”

Behaviour change

Covid has also accelerated some behaviour changes – for example a lot of people who wouldn’t ordinarily have shopped online have taken to digital.

“A lot of hospitality customers are now engaged in delivery, they’re engaged in technology, they need different packaging to deliver product, and in some cases they need different ingredients to supply the products that are delivered,” Mr McCormack says.

“Then of course there are a lot of people not in workplaces, that means a lot more people buying locally now rather than buying lunch in a workplace. Hybrid working is here to stay and we all have to respond to that.”

The acceleration of the shift to online has driven Musgrave MarketPlace to spend the last 18 months working on a digital platform, due to launch shortly. It will be about delivering an exceptional online experience that gives customers everything they need to run their business.

Amazon for wholesale

“It’s about becoming the Amazon for wholesale, having real time stock information, accurate delivery lead times and having a platform that’s easy to use,” Mr McCormack says.

“Covid has been difficult for the hospitality sector. In the first instance, we’ve been looking after our customers, looking after our colleagues, looking after our partners and our retailers, but in the background we’ve been working on setting ourselves ambitious goals for the future across coffee, meat, fruit and veg.

Mr McCormack said Musgrave has just launched a business coffee brand called Brewdoo across a number of locations.

“It is ultimately about delivering a consistent cup of coffee. We have the maintenance programme behind it, we have a partnership with one of the biggest coffee businesses in the world.

“Similarly, we’ve brought on a lot of expertise in on-trade alcohol, and we’re building an on-trade alcohol business of scale, with a product range of close to 400 products covering alcohol and soft drinks and a superior range of wines.

“Another area of interest to us is centre of plate as we call it, which is generally meat and fruit and vegetables. We have a very strong meat business. We’ve brought in new capabilities and we’re going to extend the range of meat that we have, including Hereford as an example. We’re going to do a similar exercise with fruit and veg later in the year. Our premium business, La Rousse Foods continues to innovate in areas like patisserie, cheese, chocolate, wine. There’s lots of good stuff happening.”

Advice for the future

And his advice to forecourt owners navigating changing times?

“Forecourts need to continue to innovate, particularly in the foodservice space,” he says.

“A lot of forecourts are good at breakfast and lunch but not so good at the evening mission. There is huge opportunity to capture the evening market, as well as adding on additional services.

“The great thing about forecourts is that they have car parking, and car parking is brilliant for convenience. So whether you’re going to fuel up or you’re just going to top up or buy breakfast or buy lunch, the fact that you’ve got a big plot is hugely advantageous and that will continue to be the case.”

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