Founded by two friends, The Nut & Grain Store opened their flagship store in 2021. Born from the need to supply the local community with high-quality products, the business was swiftly recognised by locals as a go-to destination for the best quality and selection of produce.
Community is truly at the heart of The Nut & Grain Store. With a staunch commitment to providing customers with healthy and tasty produce, the team had set a high customer service standard from day one.
Founders Chintan Sampat and Chirag Khokhani combined their skills to fill a gap in the market, and were quickly rewarded with a positive reception not only from their customers, but the business community as well.
From best friends to business partners
Chintan and Chirag have been close friends for a long time. As equal shareholders with their wives, The Nut & Grain Store started life as a family venture. Using their unique skills and experiences, they split their responsibilities to play to their individual strengths.
While some may err on the side of caution when going into business with friends or family, Chintan reflects that there have been no regrets going into business together.
“We’re more like family than friends,” says Chintan. “We’ve known each other since 2007 now, it’s the first time we’ve done business together, but it’s working exceptionally well for us. My strength is in product knowledge, stock, the systems, the finance, the accounting and purchases.”
“Chirag’s from the hospitality background. So he understands customer service, staff, roster and operations. So it’s working well. He doesn’t question what I do, I don’t question what he does, and it’s just working very well for us.”
Chintan’s background is in grain exports, making him the perfect man for the job to help bring this new venture to life.
“I’ve always had a background in food”
“Before I moved to Australia in 2018, I was part of our family managed business where we were into exports of grains out of India.”
“So it was easy for me to source products, understand the commercials and choose the right products. When you order lots of almonds or cashews–it’s not easy to just pick up what I want. They have different grades of almonds, different varieties of almonds. It’s important what you pick and choose.”
When lockdowns kept people from ingredients, Chintan and Chirag brought the ingredients to the community
As Victoria’s extensive 2021 lockdowns put pressure on many businesses and households alike, Chintan realised that sourcing healthy and quality nuts and other products was proving difficult.
To get quality ingredients, people in Chintan’s community of Tarneit in Melbourne’s western suburbs had to travel to specialty stores. Chintan realised that families had to sacrifice quality to get the same ingredients at local supermarkets.
“I’m a fan of nuts myself.”
“My friend and I used to drive 30 kilometres, bring in those bulk bags and store it in our freezers because that’s where we could find the best nuts.”
“As time passed and Covid did not allow us to do that, we thought, ‘There are a lot of other families around in the area who would not mind paying the right price to get the right quality’, because what you get in supermarkets is not bad, but definitely not the best. What we are offering is the best.”
The team didn’t need to do much demographic research before opening because they were the demographic.
“We did something close to home because we were facing the challenge of getting good quality nuts ourselves.”
“So we wanted to be in the area because the whole idea was ‘If we are facing issues, I’m sure there are a lot of other families who want to buy good quality nuts or dried fruits or great coffee, but they’re not able to’.”
“That’s when we decided to try and see if we can get something available in the local area and the location where we opened the first shop became available.”
Chintan’s good faith was rewarded when the shop’s landlord was immediately excited by the prospect of the store as a new addition to the business community.
With the stage set to launch the business, Chintan and his team had one last hurdle; to now attract their community to The Nut & Grain Store.
Helping the community celebrate cultural holidays
Despite having first-hand experience as to the needs of their target customers, the first six months proved to be initially difficult.
“The first six months were a bit hard for us to get people to walk into the store because it was a new brand. No one knew us, so people were walking past looking at the store.”
“But now we’ve come a long way. And we have a lot of loyal customers who come in time and again and in fact, prefer buying from us. And, you know, we haven’t even invested a single penny in marketing. It’s all word by mouth.”
So what was the spark that lit the fire for The Nut & Grain Store? It was holiday hampers that catered specifically to the ethnically diverse community in Tarneit.
Chintan found that customers would buy hampers for their friends and family for the holidays. In turn, those families who hadn’t heard of The Nut & Grain Store were now being gifted healthy, delicious hampers and in time would come to the store to get produce.
“What really worked for us was the festive hampers. There’s a lot of ethnic communities around where we live–a lot of Arabs, Middle Easterners, Africans, Indians and Sri Lankans who live in the area.”
“When these festivals would come around, like Diwali, Christmas or Eid, people would come to our shop and buy hampers. They’d say ‘Ok, rather than giving gifts or chocolates, we’re giving a healthy option because we’re giving nuts and dried fruits and seeds or grains in a big basket’.”
“That was a big marketing thing for us. It was working for us in the background because somebody would come in to buy 25 hampers and would give them to 25 different families who had never heard about us.”
“There are so many times we’ve had people walk in and say ‘Someone gave us a hamper, and that’s how we know you exist!’”
With no marketing beyond word of mouth, The Nut & Grain Store quickly found themselves to be a favourite amongst the community. The team had quickly achieved what they set out to do, and now were faced considerable growth opportunities.
The Nut & Grain Store are setting up their next stage of growth using Lightspeed
Chintan and his team trust Lightspeed’s retail platform to gain complete visibility of the business, customise inventory management, provide great customer service and use detailed reporting to make operations more efficient.
To learn how Chintan uses Lightspeed in more detail read the Nut & Grain Store case study.
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