‘When you walk into a Cold Storage, you must feel like you’re (boarding) Singapore Airlines’: New owner Andrew Lim

[SINGAPORE] Cold Storage and Giant in Singapore will set themselves apart from their competitors by providing “superior” customer service and elevated offerings, said one of the two co-owners of Malaysian retail group Macrovalue, which is buying over the supermarket chains from DFI Retail Group.

“When you walk into a Cold Storage, you must feel like you’re (boarding) Singapore Airlines,” Andrew Lim said in a press interview on Tuesday (Mar 25), a day after the deal was announced.

Such stellar service standards will therefore be the unique selling proposition of Cold Storage and Giant, he said, adding that this can be achieved by investing in staff training. This means building better relationships with customers and “humanising” the grocery shopping experience for them.

“The customer wishes to be recognised… You don’t want to go somewhere in a hypermarket and be treated like a unit of consumption.”

On Monday, Singapore Exchange-listed DFI Retail Group said it will sell all its Cold Storage and Giant stores in Singapore, as well as two distribution centres, to Macrovalue for S$125 million.