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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Toby Vue

'All tills running': How top ChooseCBR business met spending frenzy

Daily Market Groceries' city manager Conan Song and staff member Yolanda Song. The supermarket is the top business to have benefited from ChooseCBR, accounting for 3.3 per cent of all vouchers. Picture: Elesa Kurtz

The biggest winner of the trouble-plagued ChooseCBR scheme had to call in family reinforcement, extend its trading hours and had "extra stocking guys just running around" to keep up with the 25-hour spending frenzy.

The Daily Market Groceries in the city and Gungahlin was revealed as number one and one of eight supermarkets among the top 10 businesses benefiting from the scheme, opened to those with annual turnovers of less than $10m.

It claimed 3.3 per cent of all vouchers, equating to nearly 2000 vouchers.

Daily Market Groceries' owner-operator Anthony Niravong said the demand and status as number one was welcomed after the city store was allegedly broken into and about $15,000 worth of tobacco was stolen.

Large lines were seen outside the Belconnen Chemist Warehouse on June 18 when the ChooseCBR scheme relaunched. Picture: Karleen Minney

Mr Niravong said he had to bring in family members to help because it was "all hands on deck with all of our tills running at both stores" among the 25 employees, with five being full-time.

"We basically had one person operating each till and another looking after the vouchers so they could keep up," Mr Niravong said.

"Our stores also had to extend trading hours by 1.5 hours.

"We had extra stocking guys just running around and I had to even get dad to help after someone had rear-ended his car earlier in the day, which didn't help with things."

Mr Niravong said all five tills across both stores were running "non stop" on the morning of June 18, but he conceded that being atop the list may have been "skewed" because of the two stores being counted as one.

"If the stores were individually reported, the one in Gungahlin is a tiny store, so it probably wouldn't have made the top 10," he said.

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The program, designed to boost the economy during the pandemic, relaunched on June 18 for the third time after the website experienced technical problems more than a week prior.

By the following morning, its $2m quota was reached after 30,000 people used 59,000 vouchers at a rate of $1000 per minute.

Mr Niravong said he was aware of the scheme's relaunches, criticism surrounding large chains participating and the timing leaving some people unable to participate.

"I do appreciate the government finally getting their act together to help businesses, but I also feel bad for people who didn't get to use it," he said.

"I had one voucher for Toyworld but didn't get to use it because the line-up was a mile long."

The program allowed Canberrans to use up to $80 in vouchers - made up of $50, $20 and $10 vouchers - each day as part of the scheme, provided they were not used in the same transaction.

Following the release of business names by ACT Business Minister Tara Cheyne on Friday, the ACT opposition renewed calls for the auditor-general to examine the scheme.

"The auditor-general must scrutinise the entire scheme, in particular transactions that took place over a 25-hour period," opposition spokeswoman Leanne Castley said.

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