Metropol

I like the new self-checkout interface, though I wasn't buying anything loose or unusual so not seen how it reacts in certain scenarios. Certainly looks a lot better and feels more intuitive. Was using it at my local Local earlier.

My Sainsbury's Local still uses the old interface. No change to the supermarket either.

Martin Phillp wrote:My Sainsbury's Local still uses the old interface. No change to the supermarket either.

The former will happen at some point in the next 6 months. The latter... well I doubt it!

Martin Phillp wrote:My Sainsbury's Local still uses the old interface. No change to the supermarket either.

Here's a look at it, via Twitter.

Contactless enabled at Paddington Sainsburys. This should bump up my TSB 5% cashback.

Sad to see that the iconic Sainsbury's "green store of the future" in Greenwich closed last year. Seems it's been replaced by a bog standard metal box store

https://853blog.com/2015/06/24/goodbye- ... -1999-2015

The ever-excellent Diamond Geezer has a write-up on that store, too - http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... nwich.html.

JAS84 wrote:Will someone be hearing "Mr Singh, I'm a lawyer representing Sainsbury's, and this is a court order insisting that you change the signage on this shop!" soon? It's called Singhbury's Local.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fe ... t-why.html

Martin Phillp wrote:An interview with the shop owners who are based in Aylesbury.
http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/more- ... -1-7226391

Sainsbury's 1 - 0 Singhbury's
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-be ... s-38529780

I've somehow managed to visit two Sainsbury's concept stores in the space of a week, neither of which I don't think I've read about on here.

First Sainsbury's Market in London Victoria which looked like an early 2000s experiment. Basically they brought all of the counters to the front of the store, made them much longer, snaking in corners. The rest of the other regular but very wooden panelled store is behind. There was even one of those ceramic pizza ovens in the hot food bit. Surprised the store hasn't been rebranded as a regular shop, the plastic signage on the outside looked tired and dirty.

The other just opened a few months ago near Vauxhall and has what I think is their first Habitat at the back of the store. Everything must be paid for at their own tills and it's basically a store within a store. There's a digital Argos on the other side of the regular tills and a freshly made sushi counter which I've seen pop up at a number of London Waitrose but this is the first time I've seen one in Sainsbury's. There's also a Starbucks downstairs by the car park.

gottago wrote:First Sainsbury's Market in London Victoria which looked like an early 2000s experiment. Basically they brought all of the counters to the front of the store, made them much longer, snaking in corners. The rest of the other regular but very wooden panelled store is behind. There was even one of those ceramic pizza ovens in the hot food bit. Surprised the store hasn't been rebranded as a regular shop, the plastic signage on the outside looked tired and dirty.

I was probably there 6 or 7 years ago, and thought it looked a bit like an abandoned experiment even then. Surprised it's lasted so long!

The talk of concept stores got me thinking - is there really much further a supermarket could and should go? Do people not just want well-stocked shelves and fridges rather than endless counters and other gimmicks?

I used to live close to a Morrisons concept store, which has since been changed to a standard store. The eco Sainsbury's in Greenwich closed a few years back. Morrisons ditched their weird cold steam things for fruit and vegetables. The amount of money that must have been thrown after finding the next big thing - are they just trying to reinvent the wheel?

Saying that - one thing I'm surprised never really caught on is when Morrisons (I think) trialled having coffee cup holders on the trolleys in a store. I loved that idea.