One Stop Welford Road_Grafitti store art

The soft drinks section at One Stop Welford Road in Leicester has been given a new lease of life thanks to a wall art display from a local graffiti artist.

With the shop’s location just a stone’s throw from the University of Leicester, store owner Bhavik Odedra is always looking for ways to appeal to his student customer base. “We thought what can we add into our store to make it a bit more different?” he says. 

So when he came across graffiti artist Nick Shove on Facebook, he wasted no time in commissioning him to create a bespoke design for wall above the store’s impulse area. Shrove rose to the challenge, adding white cartoon-style images of drinks bottles and cartons with smiling faces to a black background to create a contemporary and eye-catching artwork. Bhavik was delighted with the results. “When students walk into the store, they can tell that it’s not just the usual standard company store,” he says. “He’s smashed it out of the park really, I don’t know, but how it just fits in perfectly.”

One Stop Welford_Freshers Fair

The store has also reached out to students by attending a Freshers Fair at the university last month. “Freshers Fayre was completely new to us,” says Bhavik, who opened the store back in February. “We didn’t know what to expect when we first did it, but it was great. We got some very good feedback. A lot of students didn’t know that we were here even though we might only be a couple of minutes away from them. But obviously, since the fresh is fair, we’ve really captured them and you know our social media following increased, so it was really worth going.”