The Jumbo supermarket chain has opened a mini-supermarket at Eindhoven train station in a bid to muscle in on a market presently dominated by Abert Heijn, public broadcaster NOS reports.

The family business from Brabant want to open between 20 and 30 small Jumbo City supermarkets across the country.

‘We are keen to expand,’ Jumbo director Colette Cloosterman-Van Eerd told NOS, ‘but we are limited by the number of locations that are freed up at NS stations.’

According to Jan-Willem Grievink of the Food Service Institute, Jumbo wants to distinguish itself from the Albert Heijn AH To Go shops by offering ‘ultra fresh’ food, a formula taken over from the La Place restaurants which the company bought after the collapse of V&D.

Convenience stores like those operated by Jumbo and Albert Heijn will increase to a couple of thousands in the coming years, Grievink told the broadcaster. They will be placed  near to office complexes and shopping centres as well as stations, he said.

Although the products cost more than in in the normal supermarkets the market is a lucrative one.

‘The convenience side, the fact that people can decide where, what and when to eat is much more important and apparently people are willing to pay for it,’ NOS quotes Grievink as saying.

According to research it is mainly the under 40s who buy sandwiches and snacks at station convenience stores.