Store gallery: Grocer Tesco updates its convenience store offer

There’s been a Tesco Metro on Tooley Street at London Bridge for close to 18 months now and when it opened it was hailed as symbolic of the future of the grocer’s convenience arm. Here was a store that was tailored to the needs of its affluent locale - just across the Thames from the City and on the way home for many of the workers in the area.

So fresh was to the fore and centre stage was given in this subterranean store to the checkouts, which are at the heart of the shop. It was also noteworthy for the non-standard colour scheme (apple green) and for the sheer quantity of chilled alcohol, ready to take home and celebrate.

Yet only a relatively short while since opening, much has changed in this store and, while it is recognisably the same place, many of the elements that define the space have been altered and new pieces have been added to the in-store jigsaw.

The store has just undergone a revamp and in part this has to do with the design shake-up that Tesco branches have been benefiting from since the beginning of last year. It is also related to the retailer’s part-ownership of coffee shop chain Harris + Hoole.

Integrating Harris + Hoole

The latter is the first thing that a visitor to this store is likely to notice. Harris + Hoole coffee shops started appearing in 2012, with the Amersham branch being the first - it opened in August. Designed to look like the kind of thing that might be found in Shoreditch or perhaps the trendier parts of Brooklyn, the long zinc counter and comfy chairs in the Amersham cafe made the nearby Costa Coffee branch look a mite lacklustre.

In Tooley Street, the same studied handmade feel is evident, although this branch is more of the ‘to go’ variety than its Chiltern precursor. The fact that it has its own discrete entrance, making it effectively ‘together, yet apart’ from the rest of the store gives it an easy-win kudos that might have been difficult to achieve had it been an in-store implant.

Fortified therefore with an ‘artisanal’ double espresso and heading down the escalator into the store, the initial vista is dominated by bowler hats. Anybody who has visited a branch of Ted Baker or perhaps the second floor of the Austin Reed flagship on Regent Street will be familiar with the use of this form of headwear as a light shade, and in Tooley Street a cluster of pendant bowler hats set at different heights form an impromptu chandelier.

This is the entrance to the Euphorium Bakery area in the store and those who live in the more chichi parts of north and west London will know the brand and its products.

The fact that it is in this branch of Tesco is testimony to this store’s location as Euphorium products veer towards the more aspirational end of the baked spectrum.

Glancing beyond the bowler hats, the upper part of the perimeter wall has a scrolling plant design of the kind that Aubrey Beardsley might have doffed his cap to. And below, like Harris + Hoole at street level, the bakery feels as if it has been imported from well to do suburbs, rather than the formerly rough and ready environs that characterised Southwark, where Tooley Street is.

In part, this has been realised by varying the materials palette from the rest of the store. It includes a wood-topped circular table with a steel base, which stands on a circular wooden parquet mat. This is the showpiece at the entrance to the department and features the ‘bread of the day’. The rest of the floor in this area is tiled, other than along the perimeter, just below the bakery display shelves, where it’s parquet flooring once more.

The other thing that is worth noting about this part of the shop is the touchscreen attached to a pillar with a graphic above stating ‘order sumptuous cakes right here’. Providing access to the wider Euphorium Bakery world.

Shopper appeal

And so to the rest of the store, which in spite of its underground location succeeds in feeling as if it is not below stairs. Simon Threadkell, design and formats director, says the store’s below street level situation was one of the “massive challenges” when it was first fitted out.

Following the refit, which took place around a month ago, care has been taken to maintain the sense that this
is a store that should appeal, in spite of its location.

The product mix has also changed. “If you think about where we were before, we’ve now added a much better food-to-go offer and we’ve got some really good partners in this store,” says Threadkell. He continues: “On a more mundane note, since the refit we’ve got a new queuing system and checkouts, which really makes a big difference from a customer’s perspective.”

It is possible that shoppers will miss the finer points of the improved cash taking and customer flow. They may however notice that while the apple green of the original fit-out has been retained, a lot of louvred wood has been added around the perimeter.

This is, in effect, the import of the ‘warming-up’ of store interiors that has been taking place across much of the Tesco portfolio since early 2012. Now it has arrived at Tesco Metro in London Bridge and does much to enhance an already good-looking interior.

Beauty has also been incorporated as part of the mix, with an area of the kind seen in stores such as Thetford, Bishop’s Stortford and Woolwich miniaturised for this branch.

As well as the Tooley Street Metro store, Tesco has also recently revamped its Islington and Kensington Metro shops, making them locally relevant in the same manner as London Bridge.

There is a Euphorium Bakery in the Kensington store, but not in Islington, probably because there are two Euphorium Bakery standalone stores nearby on Upper Street. When set against what the competition is doing in the convenience arena, there is a lot to commend at London Bridge.

Threadkell notes: “They [the Islington and London Bridge stores] both clearly understand distinct customer needs and how people shop differently in different places and at different times of the day and different times of the week.”

Even for those not in the market for a convenience shop, it would be quite hard to walk into this store and ignore its charms, if only to down a coffee. This is a store that is in tune with its customers and location.