2 April 2009

What went wrong with the Mother Nature store in the Hyperdome?

| tuggers
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The Mother Natures store opened in Tuggeranong Hyperdome carpark about 5 years ago to great fanfare. They put the wind right up the supermarkets and tried to be loss leaders with great fruit, veg & deli specials and a great range of continental food. Sundays had a market day atmosphere. When the Queanbeyan store opened the enthusiasm in Tuggeranong seemed to wear off a bit. They then sold off most of the liquor lines and now don’t seem to be re-stocking the non perishable goods.

I know the drought and the economy have depressed business confidence but this business appeared to have it made and was winning customers away from the majors by the great service and different range. Are the other Mother Nature stores suffering the same disease?

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Fresh life grocer is now gone. Not sure what will be going in that space in the underground carpark

dizzylizzy said :

Hi Draaco

If you want current up todate contact details for MN pple plus their home address post ya email addy and I will only be too happy to pass their details on.

cheers
lizzy

Hi Lizzy

Came across this post while doing a couple of searches. My company has also been dealing with Mother Natures and would like a bit more info please contact me at michael.fond@yahoo.com.au

any help is appreciated

Michael

Hi Draaco

If you want current up todate contact details for MN pple plus their home address post ya email addy and I will only be too happy to pass their details on.

cheers
lizzy

We supplied the new Mother Natures store at Canberra Airport with various supplies, that was in March of last year, we have yet to see a cent for any work done and I knwo we are not the only ones.
I was informed they were due to open on 26th September, yet that date has come and gone, I was also informed by them directly tha the other shops were closed down to try to fund the new one.
Today I tied to call once again to try to re-coup my money and it seems every number associatedwith them has been shut down.
They are theives. I sincerely hope they burn for this, as they almost cost me my business.

That’s interesting that this is happening in Tuggers, as it’s been going on for a while at the Qbn shop, too. I go there a lot, and teh difference is really marked. They got rid of all the gourmet stuff in the fridges, ran down their pickles rang, and their cheeses and smallgoods. For a while you couldn’t get buckets of fetta although they now have some.

There’s been a big sign on the place next to Jim Murphy’s at Snowtown about a big new mother nature shop due to open, but so far nothing has happened.

MN tugg told me a while back, when I inquired why it was taking so long to get the customer view screens fixed, that ‘the new owners were concentrating on the brand depot store’ and that ‘the new owners did not want to sell liquor’.

Chisholm butcher is also very good, if you are there for fruit and veg.

There was an article in The Sunday Times about the Majura Park store & the were rumors of cash flow issues, which the owners did deny to the paper.

Another rumor is that MN are planning to shut the Hyperdome store down & move everything to Majura Park. However it looks as if this may not be the case, for now at least.

Yeah PeterH – how good is the F&V shop at Chisholm! I love those guys. They are pretty much the only reason that I even go to those shops (and the florist is excellent too). I stopped shopping at MN after discovering Chisholm F&V.

we stopped going to the MN at tuggeranong, after we chanced to visit the F&V shop at chisholm. just like a tuggeranong market, really. or an old style greengrocer. great fruit and veg, and really cheap.

MN at tuggeranong did open to a lot of fanfare, I remember it well, as my wife worked for the Hyperdome centre management at the time. They started off with cheap roast chickens, really cheap fruit and veg, and the one thing that was so hard to find, halal meat.

I think that the decline is due to the competitors that have since come in. Kingsleys have eroded their hot chook market, the halal butcher in mawson has been very successful in capturing the market, and there are far cheaper green grocers out there that also supply european breads.

Considering that canberra isn’t that big, it is easy for me to drive to the belco markets, pick up all the items I need, and i am not walking from the shop into an underground carpark with exhaust fumes….

what was mother nature’s management thinking?? why put their store under the carpark?
why didn’t they push for a site in the old tuggeranong markets – read Leisure and lifestyle section… would have increased the traffic there, considering that there isn’t much for leisure and lifestyle, what with go-lo, harris scarfe, good guys and others? what a complete waste of a massive space, that used to be a tuggeranong version of the markets…

GFC – Global Fruit Crisis

We were regular customers until four or five months ago. The two main things that attracted us was cheap milk (just over $1/litre), and bread ($1/loaf). Almost a year ago, one of the bakeries shut down their Canberra operation, and suddenly MN couldn’t get the cheap bread anymore. Then a few months later, chatting to one of the workers, we found out they were about to stop stocking the cheap milk.

We still pop in occasionally when we are wanting to put together an antipasto platter, because their deli is the best value, but otherwise we’ve given up on them. We now go to the Southside Farmers Markets every Sunday, and we have a breadmaker, and we pay through the nose for Home Brand milk.

(our kids sing the Canberra milk song, and we always correct them to say they’re Home Brand Milk Kids!)

As far as I can see (I drive past it every day to and from work) construction on the huge one at the airport has stopped as well. The sign has said “Opening Soon” for about 8 months, but about 2 weeks ago there stopped being any tradies cars/ trucks out the front and there has been little seeming movement there since.

Yeah it’s a shame 🙁

They are a fruit and veg mob, they own one of them at Fyshwick markets. Might be a tax thing, who knows.

gun street girl8:15 am 02 Apr 09

The Queanbeyan store is also running its stock down. I heard they are planning on opening a big megastore in Snowtown, near the liquor barn.

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