Understanding Spar's distribution dilemma and its impact on franchisees

SPAR is a household brand in South Africa, loved by many of us on our holidays as we pop down to the local Spar in the seaside resort over December.

- BRIAN THOMAS

We marvel at the stock that the Spar store holds and some of the different items available in the Spar that you just don’t seem to get at your local Spar in Cape Town or Johannesburg.

While we as consumers love the special food items that we find at the holiday Spar, are they really good for Spar, the listed entity?

Spar is a distribution business that distributes stock from their distribution centres to the predominantly franchised Spar stores around the country.

While Spar expects some level of loyalty from these franchisees in the form of the amount of goods that they purchase from Spar, they do of course offer some latitude so you can get that special goodie at your holiday Spar.

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