Comment: Morrisons' M Local took an old-fashioned approach to convenience

Reports that Morrisons is close to offloading its M Local stores are perhaps to be expected. As the smallest of the big four supermarkets, its foray into the convenience sector was late, to put things kindly, when set against Tesco and Sainsbury’s (and to an extent Waitrose and Marks & Spencer), which already seemed to have things sewn up.

Yet, there is always room for competition, so perhaps sites that cost too much and their secondary locations may also account, in part, for the for sale sign being hoisted across the chain.

But there are other factors.

Morrisons was a latecomer to the convenience party and from the moment it opened the door of its first c-stores in 2011 it was not an attractive proposition. The aisles looked crowded, there were large amounts of point of sale across the frontage and the Kermit-green colour scheme was not as appealing as, say, the restrained palette of a Sainsbury’s Local or Little Waitrose.

The latter pair, along with Tesco, have taken the view that looking like an old-fashioned corner shop probably doesn’t work quite in the manner that it once did when a convenience store did indeed mean a corner shop.

How to approach convenience

There is more to convenience retailing if you are a large player, than just cramming some high aisles into a small site, installing a few tills at the end of the shopper journey and then standing back and hoping for the best. Yet this seems to have been the line of thought that was pursued when M Local was created.

A quick look at what Asda has done recently in Deptford is instructive. It is a convenience store, but it is big enough to afford shoppers the luxury of space.

That is an attribute that was absent in many M Local stores and although Asda has been even tardier about making a convenience sector debut, its Deptford outpost looks auspicious. It also has clear departments and there is a heavy emphasis on fresh – something that was, once more, not immediately apparent in M Local.

So what should whoever ends up with M Local (if a deal goes through) do? Perhaps a focus on being ‘local’ in fact, rather than name, might be a good idea and behaving less like a corner store of yore would also pay dividends. Modern shoppers require modern stores.