Metropol

james2001 wrote:It defiantely closed down earlier than that- I stayed with a friend in Dundee last September, and it was all boarded up with weeds growing through the paving then!

you're right. on further inspection it closed in the middle of 2011. Does anyone else feel 2012 has flown by?

Alexia wrote:

DVB Cornwall wrote:Wimpy still has a significant presence it seems ....

see here ……..

WIMPY.UK.COM
02-Dec-2012 @ 20:15

Indeed - and they pop up in the oddest places, like service stations in the Westcountry!

Never liked Wimpy, was always a McDonalds kid.
The nearest Wimpy to me is in Tamworth and looking at Google Street View, lives in a Bowlplex..
The one in Coventry appears to have tacked itself onto Coventry City Football Ground.

Wimpy doesn't seem to be want to be found any longer as I haven't seen any advertising or "we're over here" signage. It has no presence at all now between Tamworth and Wales and seems to want to be a London based company in bunches of twos and threes. A pokey little logo on a side of a big building appears to be it.

With regards to Courts the furniture store, went into administration last year:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4052439.stm

There's still a Wimpy in Shopping Shitty / Halton Lea Shopping Centre in Runcorn, which by the sounds of other Wimpy's is located in a place that hasn't changed much since 1976. Here in Warrington we had Pizzaland but that closed, as a child I preferred it. We too used to have a Fatty Arbuckles, but it shut in the early 2000s and became Pizza Hut.

To mention other defunct brands I can think of... Andy's Records, Rabbit, The Link, Music Zone Trade Direct, Big W, Our Price to name a few.

AMF Bowling will join the list soon. Same owner as Hollywood Bowl, and my local AMF closed down a few months ago.

Neil Jones wrote:The nearest Wimpy to me is in Tamworth and looking at Google Street View, lives in a Bowlplex..

With respect to Tamworth Wimpy, went there 3 weeks back - whilst the burger was nice, the other patrons weren't. It stunk of narbis and they were very loud, I can only assume they're too lower class for McDonald's.

I went there for the nostalgia factor!

I loved Pizzaland. There was one in Inverness that I was taken to a lot as a kid.

Re Deep Pan Pizza Company, looks like there was a bit of to-and-fro at the end with them being bought by The Restaurant Group and then converted into another of their brands, Filling Station. I didn't realise The Restaurant Group even existed until today, but it does explain why you see all the same brands in retail/shopping places all over the place now.... That's exactly the sort of thing Adam Shaw would have told us about if Working Lunch still existed.

On to John Menzies, and yes, still around behind the scenes getting newspapers from A to B, and announced an acquisition just last week. They also supply a lot of aviation ground crews to smaller airports.

Pete wrote:the leisure park it lived on is the biggest white elephant in the whole city.

Was that closed-down Tesco a former William Low? I took a peek on StreetView - it does look quite an eery place - but the font on the trolley bays in the car park caught my eye, suggesting the store there was a former Low's. They were bought out by Tesco in 1994.

I'll stop before I cross the line into unofficial, unofficial supermarket chat.

scottishtv wrote:Was that closed-down Tesco a former William Low? I took a peek on StreetView - it does look quite an eery place - but the font on the trolley bays in the car park caught my eye, suggesting the store there was a former Low's. They were bought out by Tesco in 1994.

I'll stop before I cross the line into unofficial, unofficial supermarket chat.

It was indeed. Still had the Low's style celing til the very end. There's another former WmLow on Perth Road, again evident from the trolley bay.

FACT ATTACK: Tesco's call centre in Dundee is the former William Low headquarters and is FULL of retro WmLow signage for things like fire exits. It's fab. (I worked there for a month putting gift cards in envelopes)

scottishtv wrote:I didn't realise The Restaurant Group even existed until today, but it does explain why you see all the same brands in retail/shopping places all over the place now....

Also explains why Chiqittos and F&Bs are both such poor quality.

Pete wrote:

scottishtv wrote:Was that closed-down Tesco a former William Low? I took a peek on StreetView - it does look quite an eery place - but the font on the trolley bays in the car park caught my eye, suggesting the store there was a former Low's. They were bought out by Tesco in 1994.

I'll stop before I cross the line into unofficial, unofficial supermarket chat.

It was indeed. Still had the Low's style celing til the very end. There's another former WmLow on Perth Road, again evident from the trolley bay.

FACT ATTACK: Tesco's call centre in Dundee is the former William Low headquarters and is FULL of retro WmLow signage for things like fire exits. It's fab. (I worked there for a month putting gift cards in envelopes)

Whilst having a browse of said Tesco on Streetview, I was rather suprised to find that some of the images which are online were actually took whilst the store was in use. This leads to some stark contrasts in the pictures content. For example:

Before:

After:


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Before:

After:

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And then I also noticed that you can travel around the back of the store on Streetview and see what is lurking out back (not much). All there seems to be is what looks like some old signage?

James L H wrote:Whilst having a browse of said Tesco on Streetview, I was rather suprised to find that some of the images which are online were actually took whilst the store was in use.

Some interesting images there.

I've never seen a closed down Tesco petrol station before (Streetview). Since it's on the main road and not inside the retail park, I'm surprised they didn't keep it going and extend the shop into a Tesco Express format, considering the way Tesco usually snap up bits of land like that.