The award winning, Irish owned, family business 'Fresh Today' have opened a new store in Roscommon Retail Park. At the helm of its success is the Ellis family from Arva in Co Cavan. Speaking on today's Joe Finnegan Show Michael Ellis revealed that the family group now has a total of 19 stores across Cavan, Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon, Meath and Westmeath. A family business with almost 250 staff, Michael believes that the key to Fresh Today's success is that all important "personal touch" that customers value.
Michael went on to praise his fellow colleagues and credited the positive working relationship that everyone shares. The Arva native highlighted the importance of offering customers that all important "personal touch" and says this is something that the business will carry on instilling in the years to come, no matter how the industry around them changes.
"That personal element to our business is so important," explained Michael. "We are a family business with almost 250 staff and we have a personal relationship with them all. We won’t be intruding self-service tills, I don't like them. I find them very impersonal and it's another way of cutting down staff. We work with the staff in all of our shops, there’s no such thing as them and us, and we would never ask a member of staff to do something that we wouldn't want to do ourselves."
The fifth generation of the family is now working in the business known as Gerry Ellis and Sons, which was established in 1889 by Michael Ellis' great-grandparents, Arthur and Mary Ellis. Speaking about the business, Michael added; "The stores are going very well and we're finding our niche in the market. We're very competitive and we're an Irish owned family business and the last of the smaller chains left in the country."
