AML Food's Solomon's Fresh Market has captured 10 percent of Super Value's Mackey Street sales, an outcome Super Value President Rupert Roberts described as "wonderful", adding: "Customers go to look at the $8 million they spent on the store, and then they come to us to shop."
Rupert Roberts described Fresh Market as offering a different type of product than Super Value, suggesting that for this reason, the opening of its Harbour Bay location "is not bothering us that much".
"I am starting to rejoice that we didn't get that Harbour Bay store because they have hardly affected the Mackey Street store. It is a different business. We are putting food on the table at the best possible price; they are high end. We have some high end people who want that, but they are all high end. And it's not bothering us that much.
"They took about 10 percent of the business and that's wonderful; even if we open a store next to a store it could take from 40 to 60 percent of the business, but they only took 10. Because it's not a competitive thing - it's a different high end thing."
Fresh Market opened its Harbour Bay location - its second, joining its Old Fort Bay store - in December 2012. The official opening took place in March 2013.
In September, AML Foods Ltd. blamed "internal and external factors" for a 61 percent net profit drop in its second quarter, a fall which caused it to miss its "much higher expectations for the period,"
according to its chairman, Dionisio D'Aguilar.
The company, which owns Abaco Markets, Solomon's Wholesale, Solomon's Fresh Market, Cost Right and Dominos Pizza, said it had experienced a "definite decline in consumer confidence", which it believed to be impacting consumer spend. It pledged to turn business around in short order.
In other areas of his business, Roberts said that the three stores he acquired from City Markets remain an investment "for the future" as they have yet to create significant profits for the company, while adding $750,000 a month to the company's costs.
"I say we have more stores than customers. We took those three stores for the future. They are costing us. There is no more business out there. We equipped them, and it takes $250,000 a month to run them. So we increased our expenses $750,000 a month with literally no more sales out there, and we hope some day the economy will revive and the employment will go back to full employment and those stores will fill up with customers and turn profitable."
Robert said he remains happy about the investment, quipping "we got them free".
"The investment was minimal. If we had developed them from scratch it would've been five times as much. We have three modern stores that will last us for 25 years."

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