New £1.5m Whittlesey food store opens

The £1.5m Lincolnshire Co-op store in West End opened on Thursday, offering services including groceries, freshly baked goods, food-to-go options, chilled beers and wines, 100 per cent British meat and takeaway Costa Coffee.

To mark the event, £500 donations were made to Defibrillators for All, a group looking after life-saving equipment in the area, and the local food bank Whittlesey Emergency Food Aid.

Shoppers will also be raising money for Whittlesey Community First Responders through the fundraising Community Champions scheme which sees a donation made to a good cause every time a member shops with their Lincolnshire Co-op dividend card.

Store manager Kim Arnold said: “We’re enjoying welcoming our new customers inside and showing them what we have to offer. The feedback has been positive so far and people really seem to like the wide range of products and baked goods.”

The store stocks products from Lincolnshire Co-op’s Love Local range, which sources goods from 60 local producers, including beverages from Fenspirits and Elgood’s Brewery, both based in Wisbech, and sausages, pork pies and scotch eggs by Grasmere Farm, based in Deeping St James.

It is open from 7am until 10pm, seven days a week.

Twelve jobs have been created by the new store.