The supermarkets seem to think there’s unlimited opportunity to open convenience stores. But is there?

Last week we reported on Sainsbury’splans to open 100 convenience stores this year, after beating its target of 50 last year. Tesco is still acquiring small stores like mad and Waitrose has announced it want to build a c-store chain too.

Sainsbury’s property director John Rogers also said there were 350 potential locations where it could open convenience stores. Good news for the business and good news for the high street property market where they and Tesco have been busy mopping up surplus space sitting empty.

Apparently a pattern has emerged during the recession where shoppers are saving their big shop until after payday, and supplementing it with top-up shops at small stores during the rest of the month. That’s good news for companies like Sainsbury’s and may help to explain the underperformance of Asda, which obviously only has big stores.

But I’d love to know how the 350 calculation has been reached because when I look around a lot of places seem to be getting close to saturation point. Sainsbury’s is fond of using its new convenience store in a former Woolworths store in West Norwood, south London, as a case study of how it’s regenerating high streets.

What it doesn’t show is that Tesco has opened an Express in the former pub across the road, and there are also long established Somerfield and Iceland stores within 50 metres. Now the people of West Norwood aren’t eating twice as much food as they were a year ago, but when I walked past a couple of weeks ago, it was the Somerfield and Iceland which were still busy and the Sainsbury’s and - particularly - the Tesco which were deserted. Something, you’d have thought, will have to give.

It’s a scenario being repeated up and down the country, with rival convenience stores being opened next door or across the road from each other. That’s not to say that convenience isn’t still a growth area, and that innovative concepts - such as that Waitrose are rolling out - won’t capture shoppers’ imagination. But just to say that that the potential store numbers being talked about are ambitious.

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