Monday 19 January 2009

Report on Tesco at Bowness

Visit : Friday 16 Jan 09 at 11.00 to 13.00

Bowness is not comparable with Ulverston

When Tesco arrived in a new purpose-built modern block of luxury flats just over a year ago, the only shops were the Co-op and a butcher. Both are doing well now.

The killer for the small shops had been the coming of Booths up the road in Windermere, when three closed.

Comparing the Tesco and the Co-op:

Tesco because it is brand new is very welcoming tidy, 'clean', well organised.

Co-op feels run down, needing a coat of paint, not so easy to explore.

Queues: Longer at Tesco

Prices: similar but difficult to compare:
  • The Co-op sells loose for the family, Tesco sells pre-packaged or individual items for the casual drop in.
  • Tomatoes: Co-op loose £2.09/Kg 6 pack (£2.70/kg one bad)
  • Strongbow: Coop 15 x 440 £9.99 (£1.51/lt) Tesco 4 x 440 £3.40 (£1.93/lt)
  • Carling: Coop 15 x 440 £10.49 (£1.58/lt) Tesco 4 x 500 £4.55 ( £2.28/lt)
  • Other items often very similar
Service friendlier at Co-op, the staff were very helpful and seemed like old hands. Staff at Tesco was new (high turnover?) 'professional' .

The quality of produce was inferior at Tesco, but that is based on a small sample (they sold tomatoes that were already mouldy on 18/01/09 (photo taken 19/01/09) in a packet labelled best before 22 /01/09) see below.


Deliveries: Tesco at 5:30 am which annoys the luxury flat owners above.

Impact : Co-op initially lost sales but customers returned and now sales same as before.

Could be that tourists favour Tesco which is down near the marina whilst Co-op is up the hill and favoured by locals.

The only other shop in the frame, a butcher, had lost sales when Booths arrived, but there has been no impact since Tesco arrived - if anything business is slightly better.

The butcher said that the greatest impact had been on sales of drinks where Tesco had clobbered the opposition.

One important point: people suggest that Tesco in Ulverston will employ more people.

It is easy to distort this figure as we are talking about part time jobs which can be for any length of time:


Thus 4 people working 9hrs/week = 2 people working 18 hrs a week

Does this really create more jobs.

Perhaps we all need to work part time and earn less rather than full time and have little time for ourselves and our children.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We also need to turn our attention to the tragic loss of The Braddylls. A fine old "Traditional Inn" of olde Ulverston towne, one of the towns tourist attractions, which, rumour has it, is going to be turned into "trendy flats" for offcomers, which is apparently the direction the town is sadly going, catering for bloody offcomers and wrecking it for residents. A town with it's centre full of useless shops that are no use to locals!

Geoff Dellow said...

Two things:

We need to encourage young people to work at least part time for themselves.

Tourism is not a perfect solution: we need to be more self reliant in terms of manufacturing businesses in Ulverston.

We could plan ahead for the intelligent use of the land to be vacated by Glaxo in a few year's time by keeping here imaginative businesses, like 'The Pod'; a continental camping hut which started on Low Mill industrial estate but moved away because of high rents.

Ben said...

The problem with all the independantly owned shops in Ulverston is their anachronistic opening hours. The days when the man of the house was the sole breadwinner, whilst the woman did the shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. during the day are gone. Most affluent households are now dual income. Such people would often prefer to shop with local independant traders, but can't, because they're closed at the times when people want to use them. So wealthier, employed people have no option other than go to larger stores which have a more modern approach to retailing.

Geoff Dellow said...

Makes a lot of sense.

Traders are you listening.

Councillors - we need easy FREE evening parking for the shops.