High praise for Crowle Food Store

The Co-op Crowle Food Store received the bronze award at the Lincolnshire Co-op’s Stores of the Year award ceremony at the Lincolnshire Showground.

Store manager Irene Bailey said the team was honoured to receive the accolade.

She added: “We were really excited to be invited to the awards ceremony because the store has only been open for two years.

“Our team is a friendly bunch, we’re like a big happy family and I think that helps us to provide great customer service – that and our lovely customers.”

The silver award went to Navenby Food Store and the gold award winner was Kirton Lindsey Food Store.

The award nominees were chosen after a ‘mystery shopper’ from independent companies visited stores from across the region to inspect standards and customer service.

Colleagues from across the Co-op also celebrated personal training achievements and staff who had gone above and beyond the call of duty were honoured with gold, silver and bronze employee of the year awards.

In 2015 more than 132,872 hours of formal training was completed on and off the job in subjects from first line management and food safety to funeral services, retail and pharmacy skills.

A total of 12 colleagues were also presented with awards for completing university qualifications ranging from foundation to masters degrees.

Lincolnshire Co-op is an independent co-operative society, with its head office in Lincoln. It has around 250,000 members in Lincolnshire, Newark and the surrounding counties.