July is proving to be a busy month! Along with attending the preview for Plymouth Young Contemporary Open 2016 and the relaunch of H&M, I’ve also attended the launch of Holland and Barrett More. This concept store is the first of its kind within the South West, which is pretty impressive. First of its kind stores are always bigger and better than their normal stores.
I was very impressed with the overall look of the store as it was very bright and inviting. To celebrate their Grand Opening, the store had planned a fun-filled day. Allowing customers to experience all the new concepts the store had to offer. All the staff were very friendly and allowed you to explore the store but were still on hand to help out! Which is always nice.
I loved the way in which they had everything on show, everything was clearly labelled and their displays were amazing. They had props to symbolise what exactly it was. The honey section was amazing as there were beehives in the middle to display all the different honeys. The display was of course bright and inviting as it was the strong yellow that you would recognise with bees.
For all the different tea bags, they had them all on display in these cute little glass mugs for you to smell before you buy. It’s super inviting and you just have to smell them all! For me the smell of tea is just as important as the taste. Of course you can’t smell them all and not have a favourite. I loved the smell of Blueberry Bliss by London Fruit & Herb Co., Strawberry & Kiwi Tea by Charbrew and Apple & Cinnamon by Heath and Heather.
There just seemed to be very good ideas all round in this store as they had a Pick n Mix station. Normally these are filled with sweet favourites like strawberries, chocolate raisins, fried eggs and jelly beans but this was the healthy option with different fruits and nuts. This is such a cool idea as when you buy the already packed fruit mix, there might be something there you don’t like.
This way though you can personalise it to yourself, so add as much or as little as you want and you don’t have to worry that there’s anything there that you won’t eat. They had a good selection here and I will be coming back here to pick up my own bag of goodies as I just love my dried fruit. Even putting in some cheeky chocolate covered raisins. Ideas like this may even help more people to eat fruit as they can choose what they want.
Moving on from one Pick n Mix station to another, they even had one for olives so you could chose different olives to fill a pot. It’s exactly the same as the fruit and nut Pick n Mix station just it’s olives instead. These are a good idea as you can just help yourself to exactly what you want. I’m not much of an olive fan myself but I can see this being really good for a lot of people.
Now this next area of the store isn’t really my area of expertises but I thought it was still an interesting part of the new store. One whole corner of the store is dedicated to Sports Nutrition which I see as a good thing as you know exactly where it is. Anyone sporty will be able to pick up the best protein powders on the market from here. They also have a Body Analysis machine which can measure your BMI and hydration levels.
The staff located within this section of the store are all trained to help customers to improve their fitness and sporting performance. This machine goes one step further in helping customers as they can get the full experience out of shopping for their proteins. I can see this being a big hit within the new store. Especially as it’s something new and exciting.
As part of their grand opening, they had an ice-cream cart outside with desserts that were diary and gluten free. A lot of items that Holland & Barrett sell are free from foods and suitable for vegetarians and vegans. For me, I’m not a massive fan of free from foods, some I’ve tried in the past haven’t been all that good. You can tell that a certain ingredient is missing.
These desserts though were amazing, there were three flavours from Pudology to choose from Chocolate Orange, Banoffee and Chocolate. They tasted much better than I thought they would be which was nice. I couldn’t help but try all three and I’m glad I did. It was a nice idea having the cart outside as it was enticing customers to the new store. Who doesn’t love a good pudding!
Thank you so much for reading this post, be sure to let me know in the comments what you think of this new concept store from Holland & Barrett. Also if you’ve visited a More store, tell me your thoughts about the stores and what you like about them.
An Ocean Glimmer 