Current trends in food retailing (New text added is in different coloured font)

Year	Number of stores	Average store size (1,000 sq metres)
1970	30
1980	70
1982	65
1992	207	4.05
1994	202	4.03
1995	204	4.05
1996	207	4.1
1997	214	4.1
1998	218	4.2
1999	229
2000	236
2001	245
2002	259,	4.2
2003	265
2004	266
2005	283
2006	317
2007	336
2008	329
2010	375

P JONES, ‘Retail innovation and diffusion – the spread of Asda stores’, AREA’, Vol.13, No.3, pp.197-201, 1983.

Co-op

http://www.co-operative.coop/

Set up in 1844 by 28 men from Rochdale, Lancashire, as the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers society, to make food available to working people at a reasonable price. Any profits were returned to members as a dividend, or ‘divi’.

2002, Co-op bought GTS Supermarkets, a small Yorkshire-based chain. Co-op also bought the Alldays chain of convenience stores.

7/2008 The Co-op took over Somerfield. This move doubled the Co-op’s market share to almost 8% and made it the UK’s 5^th largest supermarket chain after the Big Four (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, and Morrison). The UK (2008) had around 85% of its grocery retailing in the hands of just 5 retailers. On local competition grounds, the Co-op had to sell 38 former Somerfield stores; these were bought in 2008 by Morrison.

Store numbers

2001, 1,297

2004, 1,746 (1250 are ‘convenience stores’).

2005, 2,312

2007, 2,488

2008, 3.123 (including the former Somerfield stores)

FreshXxpress

2007, A relatively tiny remnant of the old Kwik Save chain (See ‘Somerfield’, 2006 and 2007) has been reborn as the new Fresh Express chain. The entrepreneur Brendan Murtagh has picked 56 of the 251 Kwik Save stores that remained when the fascia finally ceased trading in 2007. Of these, Mr Murtagh will sell 32 and re-fascia the remaining 24 as ‘Fresh Express’ (The Grocer, 14 July 2007, p.28). These 24 stores are mainly in less affluent parts of the UK; in south Wales, the north and east Midlands, Merseyside, and the north-east. It is unlikely that Mr Murtagh, the 11^th richest man in Ireland, will be living too close to any of his new stores, but his biggest problem may be overcoming the bad legacy Kwik Save left with its suppliers, many of whom were unpaid for months before Kwik save collapsed.

29 March 2008 – The jinx of Kwik Save lives on…..

FreshXpress went into liquidation

In July 2007 FreshXpress began with 56 old Kwik Save stores but only 24 were ever opened under the FreshXpress fascia (the Grocer, 29 March 2008, p.5). However by March 2008 the total number of FrteshXpress stores trading was down to 9. FreshXpress staff were taken by surprise by the closure, which seemed to have echoes of the confusion surrounding the last days of Kwik Save.

Gateway

1989 The Isosceles Group paid £2.3 billion for Gateway in 1989.

10/1990, Gateway had 732 stores.

1993, bought by Somerfield. See SOMERFIELD for more details

Iceland

www.iceland.co.uk, www.thebigfoodgroup.co.uk,

Iceland is part of The Big Food Group, which is based at:-

Second Avenue, Deeside Industrial Park, Deeside, Clwyd, CH5 2NW, 01844 830100

Iceland was established in 1970.

Year	Number of stores	Average store size (square metres)
1970	1^st store
1973	2^nd store opened
1975	18
1988	275 inc Bejam stores
1994	752	478
1995	750	476
1996	766	477
1997	766	478
1998	770	478
1999	760	478
2000	760	478
2001	770	487
2002	764
2003	754
2004	748
2005	730
2006	695
2010	760

Source primarily Eurofood, 24/1/07, p.16

1970 Founders Malcolm Walker and Peter Hinchcliffe opened their first frozen food store, in Oswestry, north Wales. Prior to this the pair had been selling strawberries from the roadside, effectively moonlighting from jobs they found unfulfilling at Marks and Spencer’s. M & S found this out and dismissed them.

1973 Iceland opened its second store at Rhyl, also in north Wales.

1975 Iceland grew rapidly as more UK homes acquired freezers. By 1975 Iceland had 18 stores in north Wales.

1977 Iceland opened its first supermarket-type outlet, in the Arndale Centre, Manchester.

1978 Iceland moved to its present head office at Deeside, north Wales.

1982 Iceland introduced its own-label frozen food lines.

1983 Iceland bought the failing 18-store frozen food chain, St Catherines, and revived the stores.

1988 Iceland took over its larger rival, Bejam

9/1997, Iceland began its Home Delivery service.

1998 Iceland banned GM (genetically modified) ingredients from its own-label foods. At this time public distrust of so-called ‘Frankenstein Foods’ was growing rapidly.

1993 Iceland frozen food went on sale in Littlewoods stores.

1999 Iceland banned artificial colours and flavours from its own label products

2000, Iceland rebranded itself ‘Iceland.co.uk’.

5/2000, Iceland bought the Cash and carry group, Booker, the wholesaler for 100,000 independent retailers.

2001 Iceland entered a difficult period; intense competition from the UK’s large supermarkets was hitting Iceland sales and profits. See 2005.

2002 Iceland was renamed as The Big Food Group. High Street stores retained the Iceland fascia.

6/2004, sales at Iceland’s 748 stores fell by 1.9% over the past 12 months, due to intense price competition from Tesco, Asda/Wal Mart, and Morrison/Safeway. Iceland was turning its mainly frozen food stores into more of a convenience store format, selling vegetables, alcohol, and tobacco; by 8/6/04, 100 shops had been altered and 150 will be changed during the rest of 2004 (Daily Express, 8/6/04, p.2).

2005 After 4 years of sharply falling sales and profits at Iceland, the Baugur Group took over Iceland. The product range was rationalised and overheads cut; this restored the company’s fortunes.

1/2006, Iceland sold some stores to Marks and Spencer, reducing its store portfolio from 703 to 675.

2007 Iceland saw strong growth in its home delivery service. The store sponsored the TV show ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’.

Kwik Save

After 2/1998 see Somerfield

1958 –6 July2007 RIP passed away after a lingering malaise that began in 1998

Founded as Value Foods in 1958 in Wales by Albert Gubay. Gubay gained some notoriety amongst other retailers by infringing local laws on shop opening, for example by staying open till 9pm on Fridays (for the legality of this, see the 1950 Shops Act, under ‘8/2000’, Tesco), and by his aggressive price-cutting. Some manufacturers refused to supply him. In 1964 Gubay visited the USA and decided to try a strategy of selling a limited range at very low prices. This produced more sales than the existing Gubay supermarkets and by 1970 Kwik save Discount had 24 stores. By 1980 Kwik Save had over 200 stores. Kwik Save grew strongly due to its competitive prices until the early 1990s when Asda’s low prices policy, as well as the entry of the discounters Aldi, Lidl, and Netto, curbed this growth.

1989, Kwik Save bought the Victor Value chain of discount grocery stores from Bejam/Iceland.

5/1989, Kwik Save had 630 UK stores.

12/1989, Kwik Save had 618 UK stores.

10/1990, Kwik Save had 600 UK stores.

3/1991, Kwik Save had 670 stores.

7/1993, Kwik Save had 780 stores.

10/1993, Kwik Save had 815 stores. Kwik Save opened its first store in Scotland, at the Pollock Centre, Glasgow. Kwik Save, late 1993, aimed to open one store a week.

4/1994, Kwik Save had 840 stores.

5/1996, Kwik Save had 980 stores.

6/1997, Kwik Save had 900 stores.

7/1998, on merger with Somerfield, Kwik Save had 900 stores. This number fell in subsequent years. For later developments see Somerfield.

6 July 2007 Kwik Save formally went into receivership. The administrators KPMG have sold 56 of the last 146 remaining stores to FreshXpress, salvaging 600 jobs (source, Eurofood, 11/7/07, p.21).

Lidl

http://www.lidl.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/lidl_uk/hs.xsl/index.htm

1930s, Lidl and Schwarz Grocery Wholesale founded in Germany.

1973 First Lidl store opened, in Germany.

1994. Lidl entered the UK in November

3/1995, Lidl bought 5 ‘Penny’ stores from Budgen.

5/9/2006. Lidl is to experiment with selling cut-price flights (with Air Berlin) at its UK checkouts. Lidl claimed there would be a natural match between cut-price grocery shopping and cheap flights; other rival airlines said air travellers would tend to look for good flight deals on the Internet, not at a supermarket.

2006, Lidl plans to double its current portfolio of 77 Scottish stores by 2016 at a cost of £200 million. Its competitor Aldi is also expanding in Scotland at this time, see Aldi above. 22/6/2006, Lidl opened a store in Orkney.

9/2007, Lidl had 7,271 stores in Europe

Year	No. Of UK stores
1994	40
2003	330
2009	520

Londis

http://www.londis.co.uk/

A federation of small shopkeepers, formed in 1959 by the independent retailers of the London District of the council of the National Grocer’s Federation (Guardian II, 19/1/04, pp.2-3, Independent Retail News, 9/1/04, pp.16-17). Londis shopkeepers originally paid £50 for their share.

Towards the end of 2003, Musgrave, Ireland’s largest convenience retailer, and the owner of Budgens stores in the UK, bid £40 million to take over Londis. Londis’ 2,000 small shopkeepers stood to receive £10,000 each to sell to Musgrave the £50 share they had bought when they joined Londis. The rub was that the other £20 million of this £40 million would be shared between the four executive directors of the Londis group, and in addition they would receive a further £7 million between them as compensation for the termination of their contracts. Shopkeepers were tempted by the £10,0000 for £50 deal but were uneasy at the apparent end of the mutuality aspect of Londis, with the size of the payout to the directors. The Big Food Group, owner of Iceland stores, also made a £40million bid for Londis but promised a more equitable share out - £20,000 each for the shopkeepers and just £600,000 apiece for the directors. Some small shops are barely profitable but other Londis members can make a profit of up to £100,000 a year, albeit with long hours. On the other hand, Tesco’s purchase of the T & S convenience store chain in 1/2003 signalled more fierce competition for the small shopkeeper. The shopkeeper members of Londis therefore face a dilemma, and more bids may emerge. Somerfield and the Co-op may also bid.

1/2004, Londis had 1,933 - 2,232 member shops (reported numbers vary).

22/6/2004, Londis shopkeepers voted to accept the Musgrave takeover of their chain (The Guardian, 23/6/04, p.25). By a margin of 1,583 to 43, at a vote in Birmingham, Musgrave’s £60m offer was accepted, subject to a High Court hearing in July, Londis shopkeepers will each receive £31,000 in August. Londis shops will gain greater economies of scale.

Marks and Spencer

http://www.marksandspencer.com/

In 1884 a Russian born refugee from Poland called Michael Marks took on a trestle table stall at the Kirkgate Market in Leeds. His slogan was ‘don’t ask the price, it’s a penny’. In 1894, by which time he had a shop in Manchester, Mr Marks entered a partnership with a Tom Spencer, former cashier of a wholesale company. By 1901 Marks and Spencer had 11 shops and 24 market stalls. The company continued to expand, buying the London Penny Bazaar Company in 1914. In 1920 M & S adopted the then-revolutionary practice of buying direct from manufacturers, a technique used today by the large supermarkets to keep costs and prices down. The original corporate ideal was to price goods so the working class could afford them and then to search for products that could be sold at a profit under this condition.

Marks and Spencer’s flagship store in Marble Arch, London, opened in 1930, and in the 1970s M & S opened stores in Paris and Brussels.

11/2004, Marks and Spencer began to sell off its ‘Simply Food’ convenience stores which were mainly located on High Streets and at railway stations and airports. Waitrose may be one of the buyers. There were 87 such stores, with plans for a total of 100, and the format was launched in 2001. However rents were high, at up to £45 a square foot, and the average customer spend was just £4. Prices were up to 4% more than in larger M & S stores.. However Tesco (Metro) and Sainsbury (Local) have made their small-store convenience format work, due partly to buying sites in bulk, so getting better ret deals. But the main reason for their better success and M & S may be the larger buying power of the big food supermarket retailers.

4/2006, Marks and Spencer had 13 stores in Eire.

Year	Number of stores
1901	11 + 24 stalls
2001	303
2002	312
2003	331
2004	375
2005	397
2006	408

Morrisons

http://www.morrisons.co.uk/

Morrisons began as an egg and butter merchant in Bradford in 1899 run by Mr William Morrison.

Year	Number of stores
1998	86
2000	101
2001	110
2002	113
2003	119 average store size 3,300 sq m.
2004	552 (inc Safeway stores)
2005	498
2006	373
2008	375
2010	425

1961, Morrisons opened its first supermarket, in Bradford, Yorkshire.

1998, Morrisons opened its first supermarket in the south of England, at Erith, Kent.

End 2002 Morrisons bid for Safeway.

2004 Morrisons completed the takeover of Safeway, with its 479 stores. Morrisons was ordered by the government regulator to sell 52 to avoid local monopolies. 200 ex-Safeway stores were re-fascia-ed as Morrisons.

18/10/2004 Morrisons completed the sale of 117 ex-Safeway ‘Compact’ stores to Somerfield, for £260 million. Morrisons regarded these stores as insufficiently profitable; they did not fit with the existing Morrisons ‘large-store’ format, and unlike the other major grocery retailers, Morrisons did not wish to diversify into smaller-format stores (information here kindly supplied by Chris Nash).

For further details, see under ‘Somerfield’.

2008, Morrisons bought 38 stores from the Co-op for £223.1 million, increasing its store estate by around 10%. These stores went on sale after the Co-op took over Somerfield, and had to be sold on competition grounds. This may be a risky move for Morrisons as the new stores are smaller than the average portfolio, and will be absorbed into the Morrison group during a recession.

2009, Morrison goes upmarket, introducing higher quality foods (see Waitrose 2009).

Netto

http://www.netto.co.uk/internet/nettog/menu/main.nsf

UK head office, Leeds

Netto is part of the Dansk Group, itself part of the Maersk Group, which also runs Maersk Shipping. Therefore Netto is able to import foods to its UK supermarkets at reduced rates. In 2003 Netto aimed to open a further 10 new UK stores a year. The Dansk Group of supermarkets was formed in Denmark in 1977 as a response to the entry of the German group Aldi into Denmark.

4/1981 Netto opened its first store, in Copenhagen

12/1990, first Netto store in the UK opened, in Leeds.

1995 Netto opened its first store in the London area. Prior to this the group’s presence in the UK was mainly in the northern industrial cities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle on Tyne, and Sheffield,

4/2006, Netto bought 19 Kwik Save stores from Somerfield

7/2008, Netto opened its 186^th UK store, in Barnsley, Yorkshire

6/2009, Netto had 160 stores in Poland

2010 Asda announced a deal to buy Netto’s 193 UK stores for £778 million.

Netto store numbers (in UK)

Year	Number of stores
1990	1
1995	50
1998	117
2001	120
2002	130
2006	145
2007	179
2008	196

Safeway

www.safeway.co.uk (this link now takes you to Morrisons)

1915, Safeway began in the USA when Mr M B Skaggs opened his first store, with 60 square metres of sales space, in Idaho. By offering better credit terms than his competitors, he was able to expand to 428 outlets by 1928.

1931, After a merger with Sam Seelig stores of California, Mr Skaggs was now chief executive of 3,527 stores, now known as the Safeway Company.

1962, 20 September, Safeway arrived in the UK, when it took over Prideaux and Gardner. In April 1962 Prideaux and Gardner had opened what was then ‘Europe’s largest supermarket’, a 2,000 square metre outlet at Wimbledon, London.

1965, first Safeway branch in Scotland opened, at Muirend, Glasgow.

1975, Safeway began selling petrol.

1987, first Safeway branch in Wales opened, at Colwyn Bay. Safeway now had 132 UK stores. It now became part of the Argyll Group, which bought Safeway for £681 million. Argyll operated a variety of store fascias; most of these were now rebranded as Safeway.

3/1990, Argyll had 298 Safeway stores.

1990s, Safeway decided its focus was to be on attracting families with children, especially young children. This included crèches, baby changing facilities discounts for new parents, the Kid’s Own clothing range, sportswear ranges such as Adidas, Reebock, and Tommy Hilfiger, toys, and child-oriented ready meals. Outside its stores, Safeway had parent and child parking spaces and some stores had play areas for children.

3/1991, Argyll had 312 Safeway stores, and 214 Presto stores, a total of 526 stores – the Presto stores being mainly in Scotland.

10/1992, Argyll had 326 Safeway stores.

4/1993, Argyll had 348 Safeway Stores.

1995, Argyll had 378 Safeway stores, and 169 Presto stores, a total of 547 stores.

10/1995 Safeway launched its ABC loyalty card.

1996, Argyll had 370 Safeway stores and 109 Presto stores, a total of 479 stores.

1997, Argyll had 400 Safeway stores and 90 Presto stores, a total of 490 stores.

1998, Argyll had 451 Safeway stores and 20 Presto stores, a total of 471 UK stores. It also had 15 stores in Ireland. Safeway considered a merger with Asda but this was halted after leaks to the press.

1999. There were now no Presto stores.

5/2000, Safeway abandoned its ABC storecard. Sainsbury tried to capitalise on this by offering to redeem ABC points at its stores. By 2000 Safeway had issued 9 million ABC cards, of which 6 million were still in regular use.

10/2002. Safeway launched a Halal range of foods, including lamb and poultry. Halal beef was added in 10/2003.

2003. A protracted takeover battle for Safeway began on 9/1/2003 when Morrison launched its bid. Philip Green also launched a bid, as did the other major supermarket companies, Asda, Sainsbury, and Tesco. These bids, especially Tesco’s, were very unlikely to succeed, and indeed were prohibited after an investigation by the Competition Commission – Tesco with over 25% market share of groceries already was never going to be allowed to take over Safeway. However some of these bids were probably ‘spoiling bids’, bids designed to force up the price of Safeway to the eventual winner, reducing the winner’s profits. However even if Morrison took Safeway over, there were 53 Safeway stores that would have to be sold off because Morrison already had a store near these Safeway branches, and retaining them would have given Morrison too much of a local monopoly. These stores will possibly be sold off to another major supermarket chain, without another branch nearby, although they could be taken by a non-food retailer, for example the electrical retailers Halfords or Comet.

2004. Morrison completed the takeover of Safeway. For events after this, see Morrison.

Safeway, store numbers

Year	Number of (UK) stores
1999	436 (+18 in Ireland)
2000	470
2001	525
2002	527
2003	536
2004	536
2005	0
2006	0

Source, Eurofood, 24/1/07, p.16

Sainsbury

Stamford House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LL.

www.sainsbury.co.uk

(see below for Sainsbury store numbers)

1869, first shop opened, a grocers at 173 Drury Lane, central London, founded by John James and Mary Anne Sainsbury. Drury Lane was then a very poor part of London. Sainsbury’s emphasis on good quality at reasonable prices led to success, and their second shop opened in 1873 at Queen’s Crescent, Kentish Town, also in London.

1914-18 As a third of Sainsbury’s male staff went to war (Germany, not Tesco, was the enemy then), the company began recruiting women.

1928 John James Sainsbury died. His last words are said to have been, ‘Keep the shops well lit’.

1931, (Guardian, 19/3/1991) Sainsbury opened its 200^th store, at Westbourne Grove, London. This store closed in 1962.

1950, Sainsbury’s Croydon branch was converted to self-service. This, or the Tesco St Albans branch, also converted to self service in 1950, was the UK’s first self service supermarket.

1960s Sainsbury expanded out of the South East into the Midlands and the West Country.

1974 Sainsbury opened its first out-of-town store, near Cambridge.

1976, Sainsbury opened its first supermarket in Wales, at Cwmbran.

1987, 19 June, Sainsbury bought the Shaw chain of supermarkets in north eastern USA. See 2004.

1992, Sainsbury opened its first supermarket in Scotland, at Dalmely, near Glasgow. 1994, Sainsbury had 338 supermarkets and other stores, plus 10 Savacentres, and one discount club (Bulksava). It also owned the chain of 87 Shaw supermarkets in north-eastern USA.

1994, Sainsbury opened its first supermarket in France, at Calais. Safeway now had 384 supermarkets and other shops, including 10 large Savacentres.

1995, Safeway issued its ABC storecard.

1996, Sainsbury opened its first supermarket in Northern Ireland, at Ballymena.

2/1997, Sainsbury launched its own bank.

1998, Sainsbury opened two of its stores on Christmas Day to an outcry from both the shopworkers union and from devout Christians. The stores were at Headcorn, Kent, and at Hammersmith, west London (The Times, 26/12/1998, p.1).

8/1998, Sainsbury formed a link with BP to sell groceries on BP garage forecourts.

5/2000, Safeway abandoned its ABC storecard. Sainsbury tried to capitalise on this by offering to redeem ABC points at its stores.

2001 Sainsbury had to pull out of its holding in ‘Edge’ stores, Egypt. The continuing Intifada (Palestinian uprising in Israel) resulted in Egyptians seeing Sainsbury as too pro Israeli and Western (Guardian, 10/4/01, p.21).

2/2002, Sainsbury launched its ‘Oriental’ range of Asian-ethnic foods. In the UK, Chinese dishes are now the third largest ethnic food market, after Indian and Italian (Marketing, 7/2/02, p.24).

2002 Sainsbury began selling motor insurance.

2004 Sainsbury sold the Shaw chain of supermarkets in the USA, which it had bought in 1987. Sainsbury was now on the losing end of a price war started by Asda and Tesco in response to the takeover of Safeway by Morrison this year. Sainsbury needed to focus on its UK strategy, as it had always been pricier than the major grocers but also was threatened by the expansion by Waitrose, another upmarket grocer who was expanding with the acquisition of 19 of the 53 former Safeway stores Morrison had to sell off because of local monopoly conditions after the Safeway takeover.

2004 Sainsbury bought the Bell chain of 54 stores in the north east of England, for around £20 million. Also in 2004 Sainsbury bought the Adminstore chain, 45 convenience stores in London.

5/2004 Sainsbury bought 14 of the 53 stores Morrison had to sell after its acquisition of Safeway. This was financed from some of the £1.3 billion proceeds of the sale of the Shaw chain in the USA (Daily Express 18/5/04, p.85).

8/2004, Sainsbury bought the Hull-based Jackson chain of 114 convenience stores in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and the north Midlands.

2006, Sainsbury is planning an expansion in Scotland, and has reportedly looked at 20 possible new store sites north of the Border.

7/2008, Sainsbury slipped into 3^rd place behind Asda in terms of UK market share. The credit crunch was persuading many UK shoppers to seek cheaper supermarkets.

Sainsbury - UK supermarket stores

Sources:-

Sainsbury financial report and accounts, 1999

Eurofood, 24/1/07, p.16

Somerfield

http://www.co-operative.coop/food/

The Somerfield fascia and associated names have a rather complicated history.

Somerfield began as a small Bristol grocery store opened by a Mr J H Mills in 1875. After a slow expansion through to 1950, the company, now with 14 outlets, was bought by Tyndall, a Bristol financier and the stores renamed Gateway in 1950. This name was chosen because Bristol was the gateway to the West Country.

1977 Gateway was bought by Linfood Holdings and 100 more stores renamed as Gateway. Linfood also owned Frank Dee supermarkets; Frank Dee was founded from a wholesaler business which itself split from J H Mills.

1983 all 70 Frank Dee supermarkets were rebranded as Gateway. Linfood also renamed itself the Dee Corporation. Then the Dee Corporation became the Gateway Corporation.

1987, The Gateway company had also bought retailers such as Keymarkets, Lennons, International Stores, Fine Fare, and Carrefour Hypermarkets.

1989 the Isosceles Corporation bought the Gateway Corporation. Corporate debts were heavy; 61 larger Gateway stores were sold to Asda (1991) and 42 smaller stores were sold to Kwik Save. Grocery trading was now done under the Food Giant fascia, but was unprofitable until the stores were rebranded (again) as Somerfield in 1994.

1993, Gateway was bought by Somerfield.

In April 1994 Gateway stores were re-fascia-ed as Somerfield.

1998, February, merger between Somerfield and Kwik Save. This created a chain of 1,431 UK stores, 872 of them being Kwik Save at the merger of 2/1998, and 450 being Somerfield. There were also 26 Food Giant stores, owned by Somerfield, and 83 other fascia owned by Somerfield. Total sales were £6 billion. All Kwik Save stores were to be re-fascia-ed as Somerfield. However the merger did not go smoothly. The price-conscious shoppers of Kwik-Save deserted the chain as its stores were upgraded to the Somerfield format. Bargain seeking shoppers had the choice of the discounters, the Co-op, or even Morrison or Asda, and in 1999 Somerfield announced that some 350 Kwik save stores were to be sold off. However there were few takers for these stores. 70 Kwik Saves had now been converted to the Somerfield fascia. This left some 400 Kwik Save stores yet to be changed. By July 2000 110 Kwik Save stores had been re-fascia-ed as Somerfield, 40 Kwik save stores had been sold, and 750 remained as Kwik Save fascias.

End 1998, 330 of Somerfield’s stores to sell electrical goods (Marketing Week, 3/12/98, p.6), see 7/2007b. This was an attempt to emulate the larger supermarket’s strategy, given the larger supermarket’s success in forcing down food prices and margins there.

2/2004 Somerfield bought Aberness, for £20million. Aberness comprised 36 convenience stores, five franchise stores, and a further 130 stores under the ‘Mace’ or ‘Morning, Noon, and Night’ fascias, plus a distribution depot (Convenience Store, p.4, 26/3/04).

5/2004, Somerfield announced that the Kwik Save fascia was to cease to exist in Scotland. Scotland had 51 Kwik Save stores at the start of 2004; of these 29 will be re-facia-ed as Somerfield, and the remainder closed, along with a Kwik Save distribution centre at East Kilbride. 350 jobs will be lost and a further 150 workers relocated.

18/10/2004, Somerfield completed the purchase of 114 former Safeway small format stores from Morrison (see also under ‘Morrison’). The stores will be re-fascia-ed as Somerfield (probably not as Kwik Save, given the desire by Somerfield to re-fascia or dispose of that brand) by end February 2005; the first re-fascia-ings began on 30/10/04, these stores closing until 4/11/04 (information here kindly supplied by Chris Nash).

9/2005, Somerfield has 1,308 stores, including 111 purchased from Morrison.

2/2006, Somerfield is to sell off its loss-making Kwik-Save fascia to a new company, Back To The Future (Daily Mail, 28/2/06, p.65), for £200 million. 1,000 of 7,000 Kwik Save jobs will go. Somerfield will keep 102 of the 384 Kwik Save stores, BTTF will take 171, 19 will be sold to Netto and a ‘similar number’ to Aldi, Iceland, and Lidl. The remaining 33 Kwik Save stores will go to property investors.

In Spring 2007 the Kwik Save crisis came to a head. 79 Kwik Save stores, a third of the previous total of 226, closed, leaving just 147 operating; there were 700 job losses. In the mid-1990s there were nearly 1,000 Kwik Save outlets. It was reported that Arla Foods had stopped delivering milk to Kwik Save because of payment difficulties. The market share of Kwik Save alone 9without Somerfield) had slumped from 1.2% in 2006 to just 0.2% in 2007. A major cause of the fall of Kwik Save was the success of the discounters Aldi, Lidl, and Netto.

7/2007a, The death of Kwik Save. The Kwik Save fascia is to vanish from UK High Streets. Almost two thirds of the remaining Kwik Save stores are to close, future usage uncertain. 56 stores, a tiny fraction of the original number of nearly a thousand, are to remain, re-branded as ‘Fresh Express’. See ‘Fresh Express’.

7/2007b, Somerfield repositions itself as a High Street grocer, going head to head with the Co-op, and will cease to sell loss making lines such as electrical goods (The Grocer, 28/7/2007, p.5). Cards, CDs, and DVDs will be the only non-food goods in Somerfield stores. Store numbers are reduced, and sales area falls more steeply as non-High Street larger stores (competing with Tesco et al) are closed. The average size of a Somerfield store is now 700 square metres.

Somerfield store numbers

Year	Store numbers (total)*	Somerfield	Kwik Save
1950	14
1996	343
1997	432
1998	1,431	450	872
1999	1,422	528	830
2000	1,371	570	755
2001	1,319	585	734
2002	1,306
2003	1,269
2004	1,250	600	650
2005	1,370
2006	1,424	1,125
2007		955	In Liquidation
1/2008		900
7/2008		880

*’Total’ includes fascias other than Somerfield and Kwik Save, see text above

7/2008, Somerfield was taken over by the Co-op

2011- The Somerfield fascia is to disappear from the UK as all stores are re-fascia-ed as Co-op stores.

Spar

www.spar.co.uk

Year	Number of affiliated stores
1992	2,100
1995	2,400
1999	2,700
2000	2,674
2004	2,784
2005	2,724
2008	2,557

For Tesco – see Supermarket Timelines - Tesco

Waitrose

Doncastle Road, Southern Industrial Area, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 8YA, www.waitrose.com

1904 First grocery store set up in Acton, west London, by Wallace Wyndham Waite, Arthur Rose, and David Taylor.

1908, The Wait-Rose company was officially formed, with £5,000 of capital.

Year	Number of stores
1920	20
1993	103
1998	117
2000	120
2001	136
2002	138
2003	141
2004	145
2005	173
2006	174
2007	183
2008	190
2010	228 (inc. 5 convenience stores)

1937 Waitrose was bought by the John Lewis Partnership. This is why Waitrose today is a co-operative, owned by its staff, rather than a limited company. The founder of John Lewis, a Mr John Spedan Lewis, was troubled by the wealth gap between rich and poor that emerged during the Great Depression of the 1930s and decided that his department store should be a co-operative to avoid the ‘perversion of capitalism’ that created such inequalities.

1951 First self service Waitrose store, at Southend, Essex.

1955 First Waitrose supermarket opened, in south London.

.3/2004, Waitrose bought 19 of the 53 superstores Morrison was forced to sell as a condition by the UK government of being allowed to take over Safeway. This considerable extended Waitrose’s geographical scope in Britain. From having been a southern-based chain, with no branch further north than Newark, Nottinghamshire, Waitrose acquired stores in the following towns (list from The Guardian, 26/3/04, p.17). (Northern venues in bold). Sandbach, Abergevenny, Harrogate, Hitchin, Swaffham, Barry, Otley, Dartford, Lincoln, Sheffield-Eccleshall Road, Wolverhampton, Willerby, Rushden, Fulham, Towcester, Newport-Shropshire, Worthing, Southport, and Farnham. The new stores averaged 3,000 square metres, much larger than Waitrose’s 2003 average store size of 1,900 square metres.

2008, Waitrose made its first move outside the UK; it unveiled plans to open over 20 stores in the United Arab Emirates by 2010, with the first store up and running in 4/2008. Waitrose also unveiled plans to open a chain of convenience stores, in competition with Tesco Express, Sainsbury Local, or M&S Simply Food. The first of these stores will be in Buckingham, Brackley (Northants), and St Neots (Cambridge). Waitrose is aiming at consumers who would like to use a Waitrose but live too far away from its supermarkets.

2008, Waitrose bought London stores in Chiswick, Clapham, Edgware Road, and Islington from the struggling Woolworths chain.

3/2009, Waitrose introduced its Essentials range, because some consumer saw Waitrose as a luxury / premium goods store, but too pricey to visit to buy a full week’s groceries (see Morrison 2009). In 6/2009, the Essential range accounted for 13% of all Waitrose sales.

2010, Waitrose was seeking to open 300 small convenience-type local stores across the UK by 2010.

Wal-Mart

http://www.walmart.com/

See also Asda. This section relates to Wal Mart in the UK only. For Wal-Mart worldwide, see Non-UK retailing, ‘USA’.

1962 Sam Walton and his brother James opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas. This town had a population of only 6,000; Wal Mart could out-compete many of the local shops, and the small size of the town sheltered Wal Mart from another supermarket competitor.

1997, Wal Mart entered Germany, buying 21 Werkauf supermarkets. In 1998, Wal art bought 74 Interspar stores in Germany.

1999 Wal-Mart took over the UK chain Asda with its 229 stores. By end 1999, Wal-Mart had 282 stores in the UK

2006, In the UK, Wal-Mart’s subsidiary, Asda, has ‘come under pressure from a resurgent Sainsbury’ (Guardian, ibid), and has failed to capture market share from the (locally) larger Tesco. On the positive side, the World Cup boosted sales of food and football-related merchandise such as clothing;

Whole Foods

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

1980, Whole Foods began as one store in Austin, Texas.

2004, Whole Foods entered the UK; it bought the UK chain ‘Fresh and Wild’ for £21 million. The ‘Whole Foods’ fascia did not appear in the UK until 2007 when the re-fascia-ing of some ‘Fresh and Wild’ stores began. The first ‘Whole Foods’ fascia store was, unsurprisingly, in the affluent west London suburb of High Street Kensington. The 80,000 square foot store is on the site of the former Barkers department store. Whole Foods plans (2007) a limited number of stores in the UK; only around 40, in areas with wealthy graduates.

Year	Aldi stores in UK
April 1990	1
October 1990	10
March 1991	16
December 1991	37
1993	63
1995	70
1996	150
1998	195
1999	225
2004	278
2005	289
2006	332
2007	328
2008	457
2009	450

Year	Number of Sainsbury stores (since 1990, Sainsbury supermarkets)
1869	1
1873	2
1882	4
1900	48
1907	100
1920	129
1931	200
1939	255
1969	89
1990	291
1991	299
1992	313
1993	328
1994	341
1995	355
1996	363
1997	378
1998	391
1999	405
2000	423
2001	436
2002	447
2003	498 average store size 2,800 sq m.
2004	583
2005	728
2006	752
2007	823
2008	794
2009	872 (inc. 335 Local stores)