Local upset

Napoleon had it about right. We in the UK are at heart a nation of shopkeepers; we’ve always just felt rather ambivalent about it.

Having driven the supply chain to distraction unrebuked by the authorities and largely ignored by anyone without some level of vested interest in getting a fair return for their daily toil, the multiples’ current appetite for some nifty high street expansion has sparked concern for the likely fate of one of the few remaining British anachronisms.

Never mind that it was the lack of choice and, at times, dubious provenance of some of the items stocked in those post-war, often drab and dingy corner shops that partly encouraged our enthusiasm for supermarkets in the first place. Tesco next door surely presages the final curtain for the Mom and Pop store; not to mention being seriously damaging to multi-culturalism, some pundits claim. In the great British tradition for lost causes, however, we’re now bewailing the corner shops’ inevitable demise safe in the knowledge that any possibility of rescue is long gone.

Strip out the sentiment, and what’s wrong with replacing what has, to most people, been some kind of nostalgia-evoking Hovis ad take on commercial reality with a formula that has earned consumer trust to the tune of collaring one in every eight UK pounds spent every year?

Well, maybe two things. Firstly, Tesco small-scale, rather than aircraft-hanger style, is a long way removed from the shopping experience to which we’ve become accustomed. Convenient, but in terms of choice, not greatly different to what it’s seeking to replace. Cheshunt HQ might be comfortable with the variances, but it’s questionable whether consumers will relish the cut-down choice offered by a Tesco Express unable to match the brand expectations of a larger store.

Secondly, the “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to shop there” argument no longer holds. With two of the three Tesco stores in most towns now of variable size, by default you do. Failing independents are advised to exploit niche differences, but against such dominant competition that’s easier said than done.

However many industry feathers have been ruffled, Tesco’s continues to be a spectacular retailing success story. In one sense “every little helps” has been good for packaging. There is, though, an almost unseemly disparity between gearing up to take on the States (next year), whilst in the meantime scrabbling for small change down the road. Leaving some crumbs of comfort lying around might have been more magnanimous and made for better commercial and PR sense long-term.