SO what happened to the corner shop? Many, of course, have long gone. The tiny old fashioned shop, dark and crowded, selling a small range of basic foodstuffs, was doomed as soon as the first supermarkets flashed its bright seductive lights and dazzled shoppers with choice never before known.

But while they have faded into history, a new breed of corner shop has been quietly emerging - bigger, brighter and rooted firmly in the community.

Like the Spar shop at Belmont near Durham, which Ram and Raju Sundavadra have been running very successfully for over 12 years. They are so successful that they recently won a national award from Asian Trader magazine for their fresh and chilled food - the best in the country.

Then, earlier this month, they took over another shop about half a mile away, once a Presto but now also under the Spar banner.

With a new 24-hour Tesco just down the road, an enormous Sainsbury's a few miles away, as well as all the shops in nearby Durham, opening another corner shop is a brave move.

"But we are not competing directly with them, we're doing something different," says Ram.

They seem to be doing everything. For a start these aren't corner shops in the way we think about them, but small supermarkets, bright and shining and with the crowded shelves we've come to expect. They offer a huge range of services, everything from photocopying to freshly baked bread.

"People expect so much more now. Standards have gone up," says Ram. "One of the biggest changes is the range of fresh convenience food. It's what people want and they expect it to be really good, otherwise they won't bother."

He was originally a chemical engineer. Temporarily out of work years ago, he helped out a friend of his brother's in the shop at Witton Gilbert and ended up taking it over before moving to Belmont, where business in both shops, especially the original one, seems brisk.

"We have a lot of people who use us as a top-up store. They might do a big shop in Tesco's or somewhere and come to us in between. We also have a high number of elderly people living nearby who do virtually all their shopping here. Then there are those on their way home from work who want a lazy evening so they'll call in for a bottle of wine and some convenience food.

"It's a real cross section of people. The main thing is that they're local and we're an easy place for them to shop, not too far, not too big. But to survive, you really have to do everything and do it to a high standard."

Mind you, they have some customers from Witton Gilbert days who come over especially to shop with them and some of the customers at the new Belmont shop are customers at the other one too.

"Did I see you here or there this morning?" one baffled man asks Raju as he collects a pint of milk at teatime.

What makes a difference is being part of the Spar network. "It means we are not entirely on our own," says Ram.

And while the big chains have been getting bigger and bigger and moving out of any store that isn't big enough to house a couple of jumbo jets, Spar has sharpened up its act and quietly been moving in.

They deliberately move to fill the gaps and not just housing estates and corner shops. You'll increasingly find Spar shops on garage forecourts or in industrial estates and business parks, at railway stations and on university campuses. They've recently announced a deal with Woolworth's to go into their stores.

The irony is, that in recent years, the big boys have realised their mistake and have started opening small "local" stores but often Spar has beaten them to it. They've staked their claim in the community too by their Keep It Local campaign, launched in 1999 to lobby against the loss of local services.

Spar improved the quality of their fresh food - the company was British Sandwich Retailer of the Year last year - and of their wines too, which regularly get mentioned in the Best Buy guides.

The off licence section at the Blue House store is very impressive. Ram and Raju hope to have the new store up to that standard soon.

In the meantime, it's a terrific amount of work.

The Blue House shop is open from 7am until 10pm. They don't do newspapers at the new shop so that opens at a more leisurely 8.30am until 10pm. Ram and Raju aren't there for all those hours but certainly for most of them and at both shops too.

"It's my fitness campaign, running between them," says Raju. And certainly for two workaholics, they both look remarkably well on it.

"We are our own bosses, and that counts for a lot," says Ram.

Their 13-year-old daughter at present shows little inclination for the shop, but even on holidays they find they can't get away from work.

Other people might collect unusual car numbers, look out for football grounds or Eddie Stobart lorries. But wherever they go, the Sundavadras end up spotting Spar shops.

THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SPAR

* There are 2,600 Spar stores in the UK.

* It was founded in Holland in 1932 in a bid to give independent retailers better terms from suppliers.

* The first UK store opened in 1957

* Six wholesale business - backed by central marketing and buying services - own Spar in the UK and supply goods and services to independent retailers.

* In Dutch, spar means "to save" and also "fir tree" hence their little green logo

* Spar is the biggest off licence chain in the UK

* It has the largest number of stores in the UK selling newspapers

* They have over 500 cash machines, inside and outside stores

* They have 110 24-hour stores.

Published: Friday, February 22, 2002