Christmas has come early this year for residents of Greenhills and greater Randfontein after Spar decided to revamp.
The Greenhills Spar has been around for 35 years and has been owned by Peter Aifantis since inception. It was erected during the time when the Spar brand still went around and offered to supply stores. During that time Greenhills Spar had the classic cherry wood and plastic tiles look.
Greenhills Spar states that their mandate is to cater for families.
“This is a family store, we want to make it easy for the working mother or for the person that’s running late and needs to grab something quick and on-the-go,” states young blood Costa Stamaratis who is the next generation of the family to be involved in the running of Spar. The business is for family, by family.
His father in-law, Peter Aifantis who is the owner of the store, treats customers like family and the store as though it is his home, one will notice that Aifantis spends more time in the shop than he does at his own home because Spar is like a second home to him.
“It is also about customer service, we are there to serve the people. We want them to leave the store feeling like they have just visited family,” he says.
“With the renovations we have changed physically and also in terms of customer service. We are now focusing on pleasing the people even more than we did before,” states Stamaratis with an immense amount of energy and passion.
According to Stamaratis, the renovation was needed. He states that Spar is bringing to Greenhills and the larger Randfontein a modern look, it is a standard that has been set by Spar that is now available to customers that have been loyal to the business for years.
He continues to say that the old store was closed, dark and needed a change. The new Spar is open and inviting and that he wanted people to be pleased to walk through the store.
“Our pride and joy of the new-look store is the home meal replacement section that’s there for the convenience of the customer. The food that you can find in that section has been prepared by staff that have been trained by professional chefs. This is purely to ensure that the people have tasty, worthwhile food,” states Costa proudly.
In addition to the home meal replacements, the new store also has a new butchery and offers a self-service solution for specific meat cuts. Customers have the chance to go in and request a specific cut of meat. This way customers know that the meat they have is of quality and is always fresh.
There are also added bonuses to come to the store; they are looking into creating a point system for loyal customers and this should be implemented within the coming year.
The current bonuses at the store is the car giveaway – Spar is giving away a Hyundai i10 at the end of January. People can enter by purchasing goods to the worth of R100 or more and entering their details at the bottom of the slip after which they put it in the car for the draw.
This is on top of the existing bonuses they have for pensioners – they offer a 5 per cent discount to pensioners on Tuesdays.
