Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel’s exceptional fresh food offerings were celebrated on the double at the 2025 National Grocery Retail Awards. After the multi-award-winning County Kerry store collected two more major national industry awards, Grocery & Retail Ireland touched base with delighted store manager Paul O’Connor, who dedicated these latest awards to his magnificent team.
The Kingdom specialises in picking up All-Ireland titles and so it came to pass that Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel scooped two more prestigious national titles at the 2025 National Grocery Retail Awards ceremony, which took place in the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 21st.
Crowned National SuperValu Store of the Year 2025 in February, Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel continued its award-winning streak by claiming the ‘Excellence in Fresh Food Retailing – Large Supermarket’ gong as well as being presented with the ‘Ireland’s Best Fresh Meat Offering’ award for a second year running.
A double that reflects the high-quality, nutritious, tasty, convenient and value-added fresh food offerings available to customers of Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel!
The ‘Excellence in Fresh Food Retailing – Large Supermarket’ award recognises Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel’s status as a thriving fresh food store offering the best fruit and veg, meat, fish and poultry, dairy and baked goods with an emphasis on quality, seasonality, use of local produce and outstanding retail display, while the ‘Ireland’s Best Fresh Meat Offering’ award acknowledges range, presentation and product knowledge at the progressive and popular butcher’s counter.
“It was absolutely amazing to win two more National Grocery Retail Awards,” store manager Paul O’Connor comments. “We also won ‘Ireland’s Best Fresh Meat Offering’ last year, so getting it again this year backs that up really and we were delighted. The ‘Excellence in Fresh Foods’ award was a massive one as this is something we pride ourselves on.
“We offer a large range of readymade, prepacked meals, which are oven-ready, assembled in a silver tray, labelled as Garvey’s, and very popular with customers.
“The team at our butcher’s counter are vastly experienced and many of them have been working here in the store for 15 years or more, which is obviously great for customer service.
“In the modern world, everything is geared towards convenience foods, which can save customers time and hassle. We put a lot of care and craft and knowledge into making sure that all the fresh food we serve is of the highest quality.”
Front and centre of Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel’s award-winning butcher’s counter is their internationally renowned resident celebrity ‘Bobby the Singing Butcher’ – Bobby Boylan, who has been a butcher for over 50 years and views singing as every bit as integral a part of his daily duties as preparing or serving meat.
Bobby has been featured in-depth in both The Irish Independent and on The Ray Darcy Show but you won’t have to expose yourself to dynamic ticket pricing on Ticketmaster to see a performance – just pop into Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel and approach the butcher counter with Ireland’s best fresh meat offering!
Employing 110 people, the store is part of the Garvey Group, which operates seven SuperValu and four Centra stores in the South and South-West. The SuperValu stores are located in Corbally, Tralee, Castleisland, Dingle, Listowel, Dungarvan and Cobh, while the Centra outlets are in Dungarvan, Adare, Blarney and Newcastle West.
Originally a Londis supermarket, the Listowel store has been trading as Garvey’s SuperValu for over two decades and underwent a major revamp and redesign between April and August, 2024, which has enabled it to offer an extended range of produce and an enhanced shopping experience.
“Freshness is key,” Paul continues. “Our bakery is a scratch bakery, for example, which means we literally start off with just flour, water and eggs every morning at 5am. Everything is baked fresh daily in-store, literally from scratch.
“We have a chef in the deli and we make our own range of fresh pre-cooked meals, such as curries, lasagnes, etc., which can be heated up in 10 to 15 minutes – again, it all comes back to convenience.
“We pride ourselves on being a local store and we stock a large range of fresh produce in the store, including fruit and veg and much, much more. Anything we can get locally, we will get locally, because being based in a rural area of North Kerry we realise how important it is to support growers in our hinterland. We support them and they support us.
“Convenience and fresh food are colossal for any supermarket today. We also serve a huge range of hot food on the go and this too is incredibly popular. With people working and having less spare time on their hands to cook, the role of any store is to make their lives as easy as possible. This is definitely something we have embraced at Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel.”
Very much an inherent part of the local community it serves so well, Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel has always put its customers and extended community first. “There are between 6,000 and 7,000 people in Listowel and a lot of them would come into the store on a daily basis,” Paul concludes. “Then you have our more rural customers from up to 20 miles away, who might come in once a week for a full weekly shop in a trolley. You have to make sure you have everything in place to look after them all.
“Our fresh food departments are very labour intensive and I have to say I’m lucky to be surrounded by such a wonderful team. It’s like in sport – you could be the best manager in the world but it’s no good without the players.
“I really enjoy working alongside them. I’m from Tralee myself and was sent here 20 years ago on what was initially supposed to be a short-term basis to take over what was then a large Londis that had been taken over by Garvey’s. Twenty years later, I’m still here, so that speaks for itself. It’s a great store and I love it here thanks to our brilliant staff and great customers.
“We support as many local causes as we can and it’s not just about giving them money – we like to get actively involved in everything that’s going on in the community – be that the Tidy Towns or any other events or causes. On their own initiative, two of our staff members, Sharon and Sabrina, have done amazing work promoting dementia awareness and autism awareness in the store and that’s the kind of input we’d greatly encourage and are very proud of.”
Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel,
Convent Street,
Listowel,
County Kerry.
Tel: 068 21385
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.garveygroup.ie
First published in Grocery & Retail Ireland magazine Vol 5 No 1, Spring 2026
featured, Garvey’s SuperValu Listowel
