Saturday, June 06, 2009

Gone but not forgotten

P1000993

This used to be Johnson’s Supermarket near La Siesta.

The young couple, who ran the franchise came from Yorkshire – Leeds to be precise and worked hard to make the shop successful.

They were hit by several blows:-

  • Iceland (Overseas Supermarkets) opened up in Torrevieja and took a lot of trade from smaller shops like this.
  • The economic recession drove shop units on the same row to close down reducing the number of customers in the area.
  • The wife was assaulted one day whilst she was in the shop on her own.
  • Their two sons, back in Leeds were out of work and had no money.
  • The tenants in the two houses they owned back in Leeds were defaulting on rental payments.

Enough was enough so the couple decided to sell up and go back to England. They put the shop on the market, selling mainly the stock and fittings. There were no takers, so they sold as many of the fittings as they could and just handed the keys back to the landlord.

It is such a shame because they were really nice people. Whilst she had a posh Yorkshire accent, he was quite broad. I could understand what they said and I knew the places they were talking about!

We hope everything works out for them and they don’t have regrets about undertaking their little Spanish venture.

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