Young Street's discount grocery outlet NQR opened mid 2020, but closed in December.

Owner of Lavington's Discount Grocery Warehouse Craig English said he was glad to see NQR gone, but the 18 months of competition had made him consider ways to improve his own store.

"Anyone in business will always say competition is good, because it does make you look outside the box," he said.

"It does make you a little bit sharper and say righto OK, we've gotta do things a bit better and of course it's strengthened our business.

"That's why we're here and they're closed."

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NQR chief executive Ewan Jones said the business had started off well, but eventually closed due to COVID-19 repercussions.

"[Customers] were loving the pricing and loving the range, and then over time a couple of border closures meant that we were losing a lot of that traffic that we really wanted," he said.

"That really created a real negative sales draw and it never really came back.

"We've opened 10 shops in the last year and a half and it's the only one that hasn't worked for us."

Mr Jones said it was also difficult to get senior staff.

"Maybe it's the region, but senior staff were really hard to come by, so we had to get junior staff, inexperienced staff and it just didn't work," he said.

But Mr Jones hasn't ruled out coming back to the Border in a few years time.

"I don't think we're done in that region, I think if we were going to do it, it would be a more local centre in Wodonga," he said.

"That's the plan, once a good site comes up that's more local and not in the city centre."

Mr English wished NQR luck if they were to try setting up shop in Wodonga.

"They can come back to Wodonga if they want, but I wont change my business philosophy," he said.

"If they want to come to town I'll undercut everything they sell."

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