Award-winning pet retailer Jollyes will open its 105th store – its first in Chester – at 10.00am tomorrow (Friday 16 August).

The store at 2B Chester Retail Park, Old Seals Way, will be located in a unit vacated by Poundland earlier this year.

The store is set to be officially opened by three special guests. Performing the red ribbon cutting will be the Lord Mayor of Chester, Cllr Razia Daniels, a Governor of City of Chester University and The Queen’s School Chester.

Alongside The Lord Mayor, who’s also a member of the Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, will be detector dog Sully and his handler Olivia Uguz.

Sully, a sprocker, works for the border force protecting the country and like many service animals may be supported in later years by the National Federation of Retired Service Dogs (NFRSA) which Jollyes recently named as a key charity partner.

The NFRSA helps support the care, well-being, and welfare of retired service animals from across the emergency service family - the police, fire, border force, National Crime Agency, NHS and prison services.

Over the next 12 months, all Jollyes’ stores will be raising money for NFRSA with collections matched by Jollyes up to £20,000 that will help NFRSA support retired service animals and their owners.

The new Chester store will create 12 jobs and will be led by experienced Jollyes store manager Stephen Williams, who’s been promoted to the role after 11 years working for Jollyes in Runcorn.

Joining the Chester team are deputy manager Charlie Davis who has been promoted from his role as supervisor at Jollyes’ Flint store and new supervisor Holly Williams.

Part of the opening day celebrations will be two Jollyes ’Ambassadogs’ who’ll be sharing details of the new store and what it has to offer over the coming weeks.

They are Evie, a six months old Labrador cross Border Collie from Hoole who can be found on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/evie.the.lab.x/ and  Mr Bear an eight year-old rescue fox-faced Pom who lives close to the store.

Dee Radio will also provide entertainment on opening day with activity continuing into the bank holiday weekend with an entertainer and pet theme gameshows on Saturday 24 August giving every customer the chance to spin Jollyes’ iconic ‘Wheel of Fur-tune’ to win prizes.

Jollyes new store will provide pet parents in Chester access to Jollyes’ raw food frozen ‘shop-in-shop’ and a community pet clinic which will open later this year.

Store manager Stephen Williams said: “My whole team is looking forward to delivering the service, expertise – and above all prices – that Jollyes is becoming famous for right across the country.”

Jollyes has grown its store estate by 50% in three years and has had an remarkable start to 2024 winning new investment to supercharge its growth, being named as the best retailer in Britain at the prestigious Retail Week awards for retailers under £250m turnover and making the Sunday Times’ list for the first time as one of Britain’s best big companies to work for.

Jollyes in Chester will be its 105th store in the UK joining other stores in and around Cheshire in Congleton, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn and Warrington.  Jollyes main national distribution centre is also in Middlewich, Cheshire.