Eileen Tothill has been going to her local shopping in Devizes in Wiltshire almost every day for years
She picks up a paper and a bit of gossip with her groceries
And if she's too ill for the short walk
The shop will deliver
It's very convenient actually
Without it I would be lost
Because with my handicaps I can't
I couldn't walk into town
And so of course coming here is absolutely marvellous
That's music to the ears of the man who's owned this shop for 30 years
What have you done to sort of try and stay ahead of the game with the shop
Well
In a small community like this
You've got to keep being innovative
Ray Parsons rents out videos
Delivers wine to customers
And he even bakes fresh pizzas
Anything to beat the supermarkets that are flooding back to the High Street
We are determined
Most of us
To fight back and offer our customers every bit as good as service
We may not ever be able to always beat them on price
Because of the sheer way they operate
But we can certainly beat them on service
Ray knows it's vitally keep his customers happy
Because everything he put on his shelves is also on the shelves of the competition just down the road
Tesco has a Metro store on the High Street
And Sainsbury's is about to open a local shop nearby
After abandoning the High Street of the huge
Out-of-town centres
The supermarkets are now back
They want a slice of the convenient store market
It's where all the growth is now
And that could mean big changes in the way that we do our local shopping
Many of the major chains are opening shops on the High Street
Tesco already has a hundred smaller stores and plan to open 450 more over the next four years
More and more people are short of time
Living in single households
And like me
Are harassed working women
And therefore there's more and more demand for convenience retailing
The big supermarkets want a chunk of that demand
Making life difficult for corner shops and the customers who depend on them
Jenny Scott
BBC News
Devizes
