Comment: Tesco Extra Watford - white elephant, red herring or silver bullet? | Opinion

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Today’s official relaunch of Tesco Extra Watford is justifiably being heralded as a pivotal day in determining the future of the UK grocery sector and in reshaping the future of its largest protagonist.

There have been some new stores and store remodels (Kensington, West Bromwich, Dudley, Gateshead, Chelmsford, Tooley Street etc.) that have hinted at Tesco’s intentions, but the most tangible crystallisation of what Tesco sees as the future of the hypermarket is located in a town more usually associated with Elton John than with bleeding edge retail innovation.

Having not been invited to today’s launch (something I said?), I popped along to the store on Monday for a quick look around and came away incredibly impressed. What does it mean for the future though? Projects of this type can normally be slipped into one of three contrived buckets: white elephant; red herring; or silver bullet.

The white elephant point of view would suggest the Watford store is an expensive shiny bauble that will impress journalists and city types, but do little to change the fortunes of Tesco as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is plenty here, ranging from the exciting and glamorous (H+H, Giraffe, misty veg) to the incredibly mundane (shelves, floors) that could be dropped into new and refurbished Tesco hypermarkets and supermarkets to great effect.

The red herring viewpoint is equally cynical and is based upon other retailers who have thrown the kitchen sink at one or two flagship stores but executed absolutely none of the best practice in any other stores. Again, I’m comfortable that Tesco will not be committing this same mistake.

I’ve already seen several of the Watford innovations in place in other Tesco stores across the country and I’m confident that Tesco is determined to deploy these innovations and improvements where appropriate in terms of shopper needs and ROI.

So, is the Watford store a silver bullet? Can it, and learnings from it, become a solution to the clear structural issues that are looming over Tesco’s big box estate? The answer is a cautious yes.

The treatment given to the rationalised non-food range is brilliant and should drive sales. F&F is a million times better than that found in other stores. Fresh and ambient grocery has exponentially improved and the bakery and foodservice bells and whistles could help many units in terms of footfall and dwell time.

If a handful of scalable Watford highlights can be sprinkled across the entire business, Tesco’s performance will materially benefit. The big challenge will be making sure this happens.