Locally owned supermarkets buck crisis with $1m facelift

By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
Much of the town is a tale of COVID related economic woes these days but not the three locally owned IGA supermarkets.
 
They are just undergoing a facelift of about $1m, including the installation of new fridges and freezers at Eastside.
 
Johnathan Liddle’s ColdZap, a local company, won the contract to supply and install them, pictured with the store manager Adam List.
 
The IGAs just introduced online shopping and home delivery, are about to install solar panels in Northside and Eastside, and will soon launch their new website.
 
The Eastside store is specialising in Indian foods, at Northside Hearn Place in African and Flynn Drive in American, together with all usual grocery needs.
 
Between they do a million transactions a year across all three stores.
 
CEO Sally McMartin says the chain, owned by the town’s native title organisation Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation, keeps its money in town.
 
“We’re locally owned and operated, in our tenth year, and we have 120 staff on our books,” she says.
 
“We’re quite an institution in Alice Springs. We are thanking the locals for their ongoing loyalty and support of their local neighbourhood stores.”
 
Ms McMartin says shopping habits are changing, “from a singe trolley shop a week to two or three basket shops”.