Started back at uni on Monday. Got off the bus to be met by the site of the empty bed store on East Road being turned into another Tesco Express.
Everyone knows Cambridge is one of the UK’s biggest Tesco towns, with well over 51% of all retail spend happening at the Evil Empire. Most people also will have heard of the mass protests that accompanied their plans to open a store in Mill Road, mostly citing the fact that the wide variety of independents in that street will be forced to close. (This is crap, of course; if you don’t want the indies to go bust, keep shopping there instead of at Tesco. Bet you won’t though.)
But the arrival of the East Road store seems to have been met with less fanfare. It’ll certainly do well, with all the live-in students of ARU – a few hundred – being three minutes’ walk away. But is there actually a gap for a store here? Newmarket Road Tesco is open the same hours and is only a ten minute walk. Asda is even closer, and the hated Mill Road Express about fifteen minutes.
Then there’s Sainsbury’s in the city centre, Co-Op at Milton Road (two of them), and Chesterton Lane, and Mill Road, and Newnham. Another Express at the Junction site on Hills Road. All these shops are within a fifteen minute stroll at most from the new one.
And while we’re on the subject, why does no-one complain about the Co-Op’s aggressive blanket coverage of Cambridge? No-one kicked up when they opened on Mill Road for example. Maybe because the Co-Op are seen as “nice”, they’re owned by the people that shop there etc. But to you or me, Co-Op is just another place to buy food and fags – exactly the same as Tesco. So why are they not seen as a threat to local business?
Cambridge is a fairly small city, albeit one that’s expanding quite a bit. I think Tesco need to calm down a bit, but maybe Co-Op do too. They have eight food stores in Cambridge, plus banks, funeral services, travel agents etc. Tesco’s website shows 9 stores, not including East Road, and they also seem to have forgotten about Bar Hill Extra, which is slightly outside the city but still very much counted as a Cambridge branch. They also don’t list One-Stop branded stores, which are fully owned by the Evil Empire.
Like it or not, Tesco are a threat to local business, because as much as people say “I won’t shop there” they always will.
No Mill Road Tesco Campaign
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