Convenience shopping in Fakenham
Posted by AdminFeb 17
How do you think your ‘shopping experience’ in Fakenham has changed since the major supermarkets arrived in town?
I got an email from somebody in Saffron Walden asking this question. His town is being targeted for a new Sainsbury store and their Tesco is planning to extend. It already has a Waitrose too. Here’s his message…
“I am contacting you because here in Saffron Walden we already have two supermarkets (Waitrose and Tesco) and now Sainsbury’s has applied to build a third one on the edge of town. We see from a 1998 report from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that there was a decline in market share for the town centre convenience sector in Fakenham of 64% caused by supermarkets. Do you recall this being the case? And how has the town centre coped since then?”
I said I’d post it here to see if anybody in Fakenham would care to voice their opinion. My reply to him is in the first comment below…
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It’s a while since I went to Saffron Walden, but I believe it’s a bit bigger than Fakenham (re population at least).
I don’t recall those figures but they don’t surprise me. The retailers in the town went through a very sticky patch with several premises closing, despite an expensive town centre revamp. I believe the mistake made at the time was that the supermarket (Safeway, now Morrisons) was built on the edge of town. This drew more shoppers away from existing central retailers as well as providing competition for them. There was already a smaller supermarket on the edge of town (Co-op Rainbow) and a Budgens in the town (now closed).
The Co-op has been replaced by Lidl which has developed the area into a potential retail park (a repeated mistake in my opinion). There is a small Budgens convenience store near the town centre. Morrisons has been joined by Tesco, but more thought was given to their placement – it’s in the town itself and has provided many more free car parking spaces, which was always a problem before. Tesco has therefore provided more footfall in the town, which has in turn attracted other ‘big name’ retailers like Argos, Specsavers and Carphone Warehouse. It was also stipulated that Tesco had no cafe, protecting existing small refreshment outlets within the town.
The character of the town has altered due to the introduction of these large retailers. No convenience shops in the town centre (there was one before) and the existing retailers have altered their stock to reflect this (ie covering products like milk & some other groceries via confectioners stores). There remains a greengrocer and a couple of good traditional butchers and a couple of bakers. The retail emphasis has changed to takeaway food outlets and charity shops – a major developer in the town hasn’t helped that situation, by maintaining high rents for its properties which has discouraged entrepreneurial efforts and kept shops closed for a long time.
So I guess the upshot of all that is that the town’s convenience sector has waned and evolved, but not just because of the entry of major supermarkets – rather from a wider variety of causes.