Nisa-Today's has revealed plans for a massive recruitment campaign intended to attract 300 retailers over the next year.
Nisa chief executive Neil Turton said the £1.5m campaign would be the biggest in the company's history, and that the focus would be on encouraging larger c-stores to join the group.
"We've recruited a lot of smaller stores recently, but now we're targeting larger outlets with turnovers of around £20,000 a week with financial incentives and an increase in our media profile," he said.
Turton said that adding larger stores to the roster would enable the group to operate more efficiently, after it had seen a rise in the cost of distributing to a growing number of small operations. "Recruitment on this scale is unprecedented but it's the right thing to do," he said. "The group wants to know it's going somewhere and this will unite everybody."
He revealed that under a new business plan, the year ahead would see the company investing in its core business and dealing with issues that were important to members. "Our objective for the year is not to maximise profit," he told Convenience Store.
"We'll put money into recruitment, and later in the year we will look to cut prices out of our central distribution centre.
"New members will expect our symbol group to be good for them, and we will also be investing in our own epos system to save them time around the store. It's going to be a year of demonstrating benefits to members, rather than focusing on profit."