Scott Graham, of McLeish Inverurie, in Scotland, says the good weather and warm temperatures in his area mean summer lines, such as soft drinks and chilled food to go, are as popular as ever with his customers.

He says: “We’ve been quite fortunate with the weather helping us. The high temperatures and sunny conditions have lasted much longer than normal, especially for us retailers in the north. We can already see that sales are tracking higher than they were last year.

“Soft drinks and chilled food to go have continued to sell quite strongly. Normally, at this time of year, we would see a shift to hot food to go as well as some of the Christmas confectionery and snacking lines but that hasn’t happened yet. The drinks and food to go lines offer high margins too, so the longer we keep them going the better!

“We’ve also just been having a conversation about bringing our seasonal lines, for Halloween and Bonfire Night, into the store but we have kept our ice cream freezer out for longer this year so won’t put them out until demand for ice cream starts to drop.

”All our Christmas stock is already bought and in the stock room but again we’re holding off on putting that out until we stop seeing positive movement in the sales of summer categories.”

Star performers: “Food to go and soft drinks are the stand out sellers for us and have been for some time now.” 

Successful NPD: ”The new Salted Caramel Fudge KitKat has done extremely well in our store.”

Nestlé Confectionery launched its Kitkat Chunky Salted Caramel Fudge bar in August, as part of its strategy to rotate new Kitkat Chunky flavours each year.

Combining a crispy wafer finger with a salted caramel fudge flavoured topping, covered in milk chocolate, the new bar has an rrp of 65p.