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The supermarket owned by the village

2022-04-17T14:24:43.475Z


In many communities, local grocery stores are disappearing. A Bremen entrepreneur wants to take countermeasures with a cooperative model: He promises digital corner shops according to customer requirements.


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Supermarket Tante Enso in Wollbach: The biggest wishes are Red Bull and iced tea

Photo: Nils Frenzel

It is a sugary wish that occupies the village youth of the Wollbach community and can be found on a black chalkboard in the newly opened Tante-Enso supermarket: red Red Bull. Dozens of chalk lines on the "Make a wish" board reinforce the urgency of the wish need for this particular type of energy drink.

The wish board is the heart of the store, says store manager Regina Kesselring on a Saturday morning, and explains the concept of the new supermarket in Wollbach, which somehow belongs to all of them.

Because at Tante Enso, the customer really should be king.

After all, the village shop does not belong to just any supermarket chain that determines the assortment, prices and brands, but to all of them: the village community.

At least in part.

After all, you paid for it.

In Wollbach, a town with 1300 inhabitants near Augsburg, many people are happy that there is finally a local supplier again.

In many small communities in Germany, the lack of supply is now a problem.

The number of so-called "points of sale" has been declining for years.

From almost 50,000 in 2016 to 34,000 today.

In villages that offer hardly any interesting locations for the large supermarket chains, there are often no sales outlets within walking distance.

Residents of such communities are forced to drive to the nearest town by car.

Older people in particular are hit hard by the decline in local sales outlets, because their supply is heavily dependent on being within walking distance.

But the disappearance of local amenities in rural areas harbors another problem.

The loss of the social function that shops in small towns have.

You just meet when you go shopping.

Without an attractive local supply, the village lacks more than a shop.

There is no meeting place.

»Like a big family«

This problem was also faced in Wollbach last year.

At that time, the last merchant closed his shop door there without having found a successor.

There wasn't even a gas station nearby.

The issue has even occupied the municipal council.

They came together, looked for a solution, and finally contacted the online supermarket MyEnso in Bremen.

A supermarket concept had been specially developed there for villages like Wollbach, in which the residents became comrades in their own grocery store.

300 people with a share of 100 euros each have to find each other.

MyEnso uses this EUR 30,000 seed capital to secure the opening.

In Wollbach, the minimum target of 300 supporters from the population was reached after just a few weeks.

In return, there is now a fully functional supermarket where residents with a customer card and app can shop around the clock and all week long - and there is Regina Kesselring and her colleagues, who know every customer by their first name.

Six of the seven Tante Enso employees come from the village.

"It's really like a big family here," says Kesselring.

“Half the village meets in front of the shop on Saturday mornings to get bread rolls.” The new supermarket is also an attractive place to work.

"It's a project from which we all benefit," says Kesselring.

Thorsten Bausch came up with the whole thing.

The founder and managing director of MyEnso has very clear visions for his supermarket of the future.

Bausch actually wanted to build a purely online supermarket with his business partner Norbert Hegmann that would offer exactly what customers really want.

To this end, he invested a total of 1.5 million euros in market research before the company was founded in 2016.

The data became the basis of MyEnso, the very platform that is still used today to supply the corner shops.

Shortly after opening their online supermarket, Bausch and his partner were approached by the Blender community near Bremen.

People wanted a supermarket in their region again.

Couldn't MyEnso do something there?

Both reacted and drove the online goods to town every week in a kiosk truck.

"It quickly became clear to us that the community didn't want a weekly kiosk, but their own real supermarket," says Bausch.

One that cannot be accessed through a web browser, but through an entrance door.

Also as a kind of meeting place for the place.

There are already 900 applications

It is a desire that many small communities in the country probably have.

Large chains such as Lidl, Penny, Rewe and Edeka only plan to open locations with a sales area of ​​800 to 1000 square meters or more.

But that is hardly worthwhile in small communities.

Personnel costs would simply be too high in relation to sales.

As a result, the quality of care for old and less mobile people deteriorates.

Even smaller, independent supermarket concepts are not future-oriented models in these sparsely populated regions, Bausch believes.

Owner-operated shops do not offer attractive supply offers at good prices and are hardly digitally positioned.

"The previous operating systems just don't work anymore," he says.

With his model, he tries to combine both: he can keep up with the price by purchasing centrally for the online supermarket.

Gaining additional customers through the small shops in the villages: So far there are six Tante-Enso branches nationwide, half of them in northern Germany.

Bausch plans to open around 50 new stores by the end of the year.

By 2030 there should already be a thousand branches.

900 applications from village communities have already been received, says Bausch.

Every Tante-Enso supermarket generates at least 500,000 euros in sales a year, says Bausch.

You can earn money from around 300,000 euros.

Even a place with only a thousand inhabitants has an annual turnover potential of up to 2.3 million euros.

The entrepreneur wants to skim off this as best he can.

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Aunt Enso tries to respond to the wishes of the customers as best as possible.

Although the majority of the range is managed centrally, Busch promises that customer requests on the chalk board at the entrance are taken into account as best as possible.

That there are still a striking number of craft beers from Bremen on the drinks shelves instead of bottles from the numerous local breweries?

MyEnso cooperates with various start-ups from the food industry and sends new products directly to their own supermarkets, says Busch.

And if it doesn't sell, Bremen beer won't be on the shelf for long.

A "totally coherent concept" is what Joachim Stumpf, Managing Director of BBE-Handelsberatung thinks.

The local supply in rural areas is a big topic, Tante Enso fits perfectly into the market development: The integration with the online shop guarantees access to 20,000 articles.

In addition, the topic of participation, co-creation and identification is incredibly important in rural areas.

One should not underestimate that.

Instead of driving to Rewe in the nearest larger city, people want to shop in »their supermarket«.

In Wollbach they should actually be able to do this 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A special customer card regulates entry and payment outside normal opening hours.

At least that's the theory.

In practice, however, this project fails due to the strict Bavarian shop closing law.

On request, the responsible ministry in Munich confirms that small supermarkets are allowed to open around the clock on weekdays in Bavaria - but only up to a sales area of ​​100 square meters.

Not enough for Aunt Enso.

Nothing to do on Sunday anyway.

In the end, will the new corner shop fail because of the bureaucracy?

In any case, Wollbach's mayor Thomas Bruckmüller wants to defend himself against the fact that the lights in the supermarket go out soon after 8 p.m.

The shop, located right next to his small town hall, creates a new meeting place for the place.

He wants to do everything to save the project.

The concept, he says, »doesn't hurt anyone«.

The Wollbach village youth would thank him.

She has already completely accepted the new shop.

The most recent wish on the black chalkboard: »Dirtea«, an iced tea produced by the rapper Shirin David, which is otherwise more likely to be found in Berliner Spätis – around the clock.

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-04-17

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