Store of the Week: Morrisons

It’s fair to say that Morrisons has been on the front foot recently in addressing the structural shifts confronting the industry. Initiatives have included a (belated) move online via Ocado; a capital-light move into convenience via forecourt deals (after the M Local debacle); numerous wholesale deals in the UK and overseas; and some quite decent innovations in store design and merchandising to embrace both emergent and well-established consumer and shopper preferences.

I was a big fan of the store that opened in St. Ives in 2018 with its awesome service counters, strong design work and pleasing emphasis on local sourcing across many categories. That evolution of the Morrisons format has been followed up by the October 2019 unveiling of a markedly different concept in Canning Town in the east of London.    

The new store forms part of a huge ￡3.7 billion regeneration project in the Canning Town and Custom House area and sits in a ￡600 million new ‘town centre’. The development has fallen into the trap of trying to invent or rebrand new districts (Midtown is potentially the worst example), and the new town centre is apparently to be known as Hallsville Quarter.

The broader regeneration project is set to deliver around 1,100 homes, 30,000 sq. m. of leisure and retail space and community facilities such as a medical centre etc. Morrisons sits in close proximity to the Canning Town tube / DLR / bus station and joins other businesses including an Ibis hotel, The Gym, Superdrug and a variety of independent cafes and restaurants. Established competitors in the area from a food retail perspective include the Co-op, Iceland and a plethora of independents, so the Morrisons should theoretically fare well thanks to its broader range.

What sets this Morrisons apart from the rest of the estate is not just what’s in it; but also what isn’t. Kicking off with the former category, I guess the most notable inclusion in the Canning Town store is the Market Kitchen – a run of counters that encompasses food-to-go / food-for-now categories including Juice & Smoothies, Wraps & Salads, Pizza, Wok Kitchen, Hot Kitchen and Hot Food to Go.

This impressive array of service stations – all replete with nifty digital signage – looked really smart and was doing pretty decent business when I popped in the other day. These counters are complemented by a Barista Bar in the store’s lobby to create a compelling food-to-go proposition.

The other main USP of the store from a Morrisons perspective is a much greater focus on sustainability, with a display at the entrance of the store selling reusable containers and housing a display communicating the ‘plastic free journey’ for shoppers. This includes options such as shoppers bringing their own coffee cups, using the free water refill station, wrapping flowers in paper rather than plastic and decanting dry groceries from hoppers into reusable containers.

I’m less convinced about the loose eggs though. While this great merchandising, I’m not sure it will have much of an impact on plastic use given that 95% of pre-packed eggs come in cardboard anyway. That quibble aside, this is a noble and welcome initiative from Morrisons to tap into a key shopper and sustainability priority.

I was also impressed with the local sourcing theme that has continued into the new store, with around 80 local SKUs. Obviously, London it not a hotbed of agriculture, so these SKUs were heavy on beer and more niche areas like desserts and Christmas puddings, but it was still good to see Morrisons making an effort in this regard. Other highlights included the funky industrial instore bakery, a much broader free-from range, the inclusion of free fruit for kids and the inclusion of doors on chillers to minimise energy consumption.

In terms of what isn’t in the store, I guess the biggest omission is the hallmark Market Street: the store has none of the traditional Morrisons service counters such as fish, meat, deli or pies. While the shift in focus towards food-to-go is more than understandable, I understand that food counters going AWOL has caused a degree of consternation among some locals who feel that the choice of items has been compromised.

That concern notwithstanding, I’m a big fan of this concept: it seems well thought-out and expertly executed in terms of urban format development and in terms of addressing myriad shopper priorities. Good work.