What is the Co-op known as where you are?

[Nick Harvey]

I think the translation is a little pointless in this case. You'll find it damned hard to get any Welsh phrase which rhymes perfectly when spoken in a Scots accent.

[DVB Cornwall]

One of the last bastions of CRS branding, the old Pioneer store in Truro, finally had a full refit and rebrand into a 'The Co-Operative Food' a couple of months ago. The store was a originally a Lo-Cost and came under CRS control in 1994 when they bought Lo-Cost from Argyll. The 'Co-Operative Pioneer' signeage which the store wore until April this year went up in 1996 but then became obsolete 3 years later when CRS got bought out by CWS in 1999 who at the time used 'Co-Op <Insert Town Name' for larger stores and 'Co-Op Welcome' for smaller ones. Despite it's prime location in the centre of Cornwall's only city, neither the interior (bits of which were unchanged from Lo-Cost in the 1980's) nor the obsolete exterior ever made it to the top of a refit list whilst all the lesser stores in Cornwall were updated by the early 2000's.

So the signeage survived 15 years, 12 of which as an obsolete brand! If there isn't an award category for that, there damn well should be!

.... and in Truro, the second co-op, by acquistion, the old Somerfield store has now closed, following the refit of the store described above,

[westy 2]

It said in our local paper today that the Somerfield in Willenhall West Midlands is shutting in early September, so it won't even get rebranded to Co-Op anyway!

(Willenhall also has a Morrisons & Lidl nearby with a Tesco Extra roughly a mile away!)

I'd be very surprised if the company I work for(the odd one or two may know!) had any involvement in the replacement, as we've just merged with our Welsh / Southern England sister member to create the biggest member of our symbol conveinence store group in the UK, so we're busy with our own issues at the moment!