The Tesco & other non-Morrisons supermarket thread

[rdobbie]

The one in Worksop still has the logo BEFORE that one, and the white & cream stripes around the inside, and the "typewriter" font everywhere, or at least it did last time I was there earlier this year.

Wow, I didn't know there were any stores still with decor from that era. The "look" you refer to you was, I'm pretty sure, launched in 1982 and certain elements tied in with their marketing campaign of the same year, "Checkout 82" - TV ad here.

Funny old company, Tesco. They change their own brand pack designs to the point of obsession (I've previously reported on here that their Olive Spread had 3 designs in the space of 1 year) yet they'll leave store signage unchanged for a third of a century!

I assume their signage department/contractor still produces signs to the 1982 branding guidelines for when those old stores need replacement or updated signs but want to keep a consistent appearance. That was certainly the case when I last checked a few years ago in the Hanley store - it had the 1982 look but new signs were still produced in Typewriter font, red on white, with the red piping around the edge, for things like car park prices and opening times.

[james2001]

I think that could be the case, the one in Worksop had an old style opening hours thing on the petrol station, and it had typewriter style "24 hours" in it- with 24 hour opening obvious not starting till years after Tesco had dropped that style. Sadly they replaced that sign with a modern "open 24" hours a few year back, and replaced the old Totem sign at the same time. Inside the store they had actualy recently put up a few modern aisle signs- but there's still some old typewriter-font ones too, so it's a strange mixture.

Actually most of the signs in the car park are actually blue, but with the typewriter font on which I find strange because I don't think Tesco adopted blue as their colour until they dropped that font!

And I seem to remember reading somewhere they adopted that style in 1977, at the same time they dropped Green Sheild Stamps- could be wrong though!

The Worksop store's here on Streetview anyway- definately still like it when the pictures were taken 6 months ago: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.31487 ... 312!8i6656

[james2001]

One thing looking at those photos of the Hoover building store- I didn't realise they were still using the red on white typewriter font signage on new builds as late as 1992 (which is when that store opened)! I know they were using the white on blue sans-serif font style by 1994 from an old TV show I've seen from that year that had some scenes inside a branch. Not sure when the white-on-blue typewriter style external signage at Worksop dates from (and the internal signage is actually white-on-grey, I must get some photos of it next time I'm there, if they haven't got rid of it by then).

On a related note, our bathroom shower (which dates from the mid-80s) also has the same typewriter font that Tesco used to use on it, when I was a kid I used to think it was a Tesco brand shower!

[rdobbie]

One thing looking at those photos of the Hoover building store- I didn't realise they were still using the red on white typewriter font signage on new builds as late as 1992 (which is when that store opened)! I know they were using the white on blue sans-serif font style by 1994 from an old TV show I've seen from that year that had some scenes inside a branch.

Around 1992 their branding consistency was in a real mess. I remember when a new store opened in Macclesfield that year. It was quite a smart flagship project back in those days with some impressive architecture, but ruined by an inconsistent mish-mash of styles on the various signs. Some were in Typewriter red-on-white, some were Frutiger (the font which superseded Typewriter) white-on-blue, and some were a mix of the two: Typewriter white-on-blue (same as those you've spotted at Worksop). There were some horrible clashes, with old and new style signs placed right on top of each other.

The main store had this logo on its main sign:


Whereas the petrol station (including the totem sign, the canopy and the pumps) had the 1970s logo:


As a youngster at the time with a keen eye for graphic design, I just wanted to scream "Why are you building this shiny new petrol station and kitting it out with a logo that was replaced 5 years ago?!"

Then later in 1992, the Every Little Helps strapline was launched, and they stuck it on the petrol pumps, under the 1970s logo. Christ.

[bilky asko]

Sir Ken Morrison and his son William own 4.7m shares in Sainsbury's

[james2001]

Also when it comes to branding, don't forget that while Tesco introduced their current logo in 1995, they still had the old logo on carrier bags until the back end of 1997. What makes that even worse is they had clubcards adverts & "charity of the year" bits on the bags with the current logo on!

And when it comes to main signage outside of shops- the town centre store here was refitted in the mid-90s, but still kept the original 70s signage outside, which stayed right up until it closed in 2007! Though some old typewriter style signs did hang around on the inside until around 2004.

I admit i have an affinity for the old typewriter style Tesco era and wish there were still more stores around with that branding in. I guess it's a good thing that one of the suriving stores in that style isn't too far from where I live!

I like this forum, I used to think I was the only one who was interested in old supermarket styles XD

[james2001]

Just came across this compilation of 90s Tesco ads with Prunella Scales and Jane Horrocks:

Interesting how they don't seem to have any issue showing store signage with the old logo on it even in their advertising! And on some of the ads themselves you can see stores with 90s blue & white aisle signage, but still the red & cream stripes from the 80s around the perimiter. Obviously branding consistency wasn't a strong point in the 90s.

[james2001]

On a non-logo/advertising note, can I rant about the carrier bag kerfuffle? Just spent about 5 minutes at the "express" checkout in Asda trying to attract the attention of the woman with the carrier bags. It's so annoying, why do Asda do it this way? Tesco & Sainsbury's (at least here) still have the carrier bags on the checkouts, do Asda somehow not trust us to only take the bags we've paid for? Surely they have enough on their plates with taking tags off things, helping old ladies and "unexpected items in bagging area" than dashing around with bags too... obviously Asda would rather have the messing around than risk people taking a couple of extra bags.

[cwathen]

On a non-logo/advertising note, can I rant about the carrier bag kerfuffle? Just spent about 5 minutes at the "express" checkout in Asda trying to attract the attention of the woman with the carrier bags. It's so annoying, why do Asda do it this way? Tesco & Sainsbury's (at least here) still have the carrier bags on the checkouts, do Asda somehow not trust us to only take the bags we've paid for? Surely they have enough on their plates with taking tags off things, helping old ladies and "unexpected items in bagging area" than dashing around with bags too... obviously Asda would rather have the messing around than risk people taking a couple of extra bags.

It's especially odd that they'd care about potential bag theft since the retailers make no money from charging for bags - pre-existing costs, such as the cost of the bags themselves cannot be deducted from the proceeds before passing the rest onto charity; the retailer is still paying for the bags whether the customer coughs up or not.

They are required to keep records on how many bags they have sold so will need to track them, but the government's own guidance states that a Tesco-style solution is perfectly acceptable.

I am surprised that no retailer seems to have cottoned on to the idea of encouraging people to drop off old bags for later reuse (it would seem reasonable to have a stipulation that they'd only take their own bags back) and supply them for free to people who didn't remember to bring a bag with them and isn't fussed about having a new one. This is still completely legal, only brand new bags need to be charged for.

[Pete]

Yeah but used bags are mangey.

[Philip]

An interesting observation from my parents came up visiting this week - they've used their own bags for quite a few years now for food shopping, but because of this when it came to Christmas shopping completely forgot about taking their own. The interesting point though is that they wouldn't have wanted to use the same bags anyway - especially for putting new clothes in or other delicates. This means buying more bags and hopefully remembering next year, which isn't too much trouble of course, but just something worth pointing out. I wonder if anyone else went through that this year as well?

Another observation from myself - plastic carrier bags are banned, but plastic bags are still freely available to hold loose fruit and veg in those aisles.