Jai Singh, owner of MJ’s Go Local Extra in Wheata Road, Sheffield, says the Co-op branded products are bringing new shoppers into his store.

“We’ve been incorporating the Co-op products into our range and we’ve tried to take on as many of these products as we can. The confidence shoppers have in the brand is exceptional and we’ve taken this as a massive opportunity. We’ve been promoting the new products on Facebook and we’ve got shelf barkers saying ’We sell the Co-op range’.

”A big challenge for us recently has been the CO2 scare which has left some brands very hard to get a hold of and despite it being all over the news shoppers have been surprised that we can’t stock some products.

“We’ve managed to use some of the empty space in the chillers to our advantage though and have filled it with multipacks of beers which we don’t usually have the space to chill. These have gone down well over the hot weeks.”

Star performers:

”Sugar free drinks are massively popular. People are enjoying Diet Coke’s new fruity flavours.”

Successful NPD:

”The McVitie’s Flipz chocolate covered pretzels have been really popular. We sell the milk chocolate and the dark chocolate skus but we’ve found the dark chocolate are much more popular.”

Pladis added one of America’s favourite treats to its UK portfolio in July.

Available in 100g pouches (rrp £1.50) in two variants – Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate – Flipz offer a mix of sweet and salty flavours, with crunchy, savoury pretzels enrobed in chocolate. Pladis says Flipz offer an opportunity to grow sales amongst young adult consumers.