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Thursday, 25 September 2008

As you walk down most major high streets in Britain, you are faced with this image of brand names and flashing signs. The problem with high streets today, are that you could be in any town or city. The more the big brands open up shops and push out smaller retailers all our high streets look the same. 
Don't we want to return to small, local and independent shops. The problem we have now is, areas within Britain that have kept or attracted small small shops, have become so expensive.  
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High street food hygiene

High street food hygiene

Starbucks and the British high street

For many people, Starbucks is a coffee lover's paradise: welcoming, reliable and relaxing. Yet its opponents see nothing cosy in a business which they say is destroying the character of the British high street

 

By Anna van Praagh 
Last Updated: 1:32AM BST 15 Jun 2008

Protesters outside Starbucks in Brighton: Starbucks and the British high street
Protesters in Brighton where Starbucks is said to be hurting smaller retailersPhoto: LIZ FINLAYSON

Beyond the shocking-pink front door, the tearoom is festooned with an eclectic mix of British-themed paraphernalia. Artefacts from the days of the empire compete for space with posters of Bet Lynch and framed news cuttings about the death of the Queen Mother. A dapper man in a tweed three-piece suit sits alone in the corner, slowly working his way through a "Princess Diana" – a collection of pastries served on a cake stand so ornate it would put Claridge's to shame.

It's a highly unusual establishment of the British-eccentric variety. And in that way, not unlike all the other quirky independent shops on and around St James's Street, Brighton – with one very recent and notable exception: Starbucks.

The opening of Starbucks in a former St James's Street bookstore last month has provoked a strong backlash as the world's biggest chain of coffee shops is accused of showing a disregard for local planning law. A Facebook group opposed to the branch has attracted nearly 1,500 members, and protests have been held outside the store every Saturday for the past three weeks. "Starbucks – boo! You shouldn't be there!" yelled a passer-by at the store last week. "What you're doing is illegal!" cried another.

However, Starbucks is acting perfectly within the law. When the coffee company applied for consent to transform the former retail shop into a café, it was rejected on the grounds that the council wanted to preserve a healthy mix of businesses. But Starbucks opened regardless – and, in what Brighton & Hove City Council describes as a "grey area" in the law, is entitled to continue trading.

This grey area is a legal loophole whereby if the status of a store is unclear under planning law, catering outlets can open in former retail premises without obtaining a change in classification. It is a loophole that Starbucks is exploiting up and down the country, with branches in Pinner, Headington, Reigate and Cobham.

Naturally, the chain doesn't see it this way. "It is incredibly important to us at Starbucks that we are respectful and sensitive to each community where we operate," states Phil Broad, managing director of Starbucks Coffee Company in the UK and Ireland.

The conglomerate now has 11,434 outlets in America. So far in Britain there are 650, making it the second biggest coffee chain in the country after Costa, which has 700. Yet the exponential spread of Starbucks seems indomitable – and just a little frightening.

The first Starbucks – Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice – was opened in Seattle's Pike Place Market in 1971 by two hippie teachers and a writer. In 1987, they sold the company to Howard Schultz, a former employee who immediately set the company on a course of aggressive expansion.

During the Clinton era, Starbucks became one of the most successful brands in history, forever associated with the white, aspirational, college-graduate lifestyle promoted by the sitcom Friends. But a declining brand, soaring commodity costs and America's general economic malaise has meant that the US has fallen out of love with Starbucks, almost as quickly as it became besotted with it. In the past year, shares have almost halved.

Taylor Clark, author of Starbucked: a Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture, puts Starbucks' predicament in the US down to a corruption of the brand. "Starbucks stopped seeing itself as a chichi coffee house and started seeing itself as a massive chain, opening Starbucks drive-throughs and hiring people like Jim Donald, a former Walmart executive, as CEO," he explains. "He's left now, and Schultz is trying desperately to reinstate the exclusivity of the brand. But whether it will work or not is uncertain."

Recent attempts to bolster the brand have included a somewhat botched attempt to change the logo (there was some controversy over using a naked mermaid), and a rather desperate-sounding alteration to the height of the espresso machines to enable baristas to maintain eye-contact with customers.

More worryingly, the conglomerate is continuing its use of a business practice known as "cannibalising", whereby new stores are opened in close proximity to existing branches. The intention of this is that sister stores will compete with and feed on one another before achieving total domination. Needless to say, in the face of such aggressive strategy, independent stores are forced out.

While researching his book, Clark spoke to a former Starbucks real-estate deal-maker, who found a staggering 900 North American retail sites for the company in just over a decade.

"It was sort of piranha-like," she recalled. "I was just talking to landlords, seeing who was behind on their rent. All I needed was an opening where the landlord wanted out. I was looking for tenants who were weak." It is a strategy that runs counter to Starbucks' carefully cultivated cuddly and congenial image, but it has proved very effective.

Having saturated the US market, Howard Schultz is even more determined to continue the roll-out of stores in the UK, with an extra 100 outlets planned by the end of the year. Some protesters have proved that it doesn't have to be that way – in 2002, for instance, residents in Primrose Hill, London, managed to stop a branch from opening – but on the whole, the march of the behemoth seems unstoppable.

The main problem the protesters face is that, while people may hate the business, they love the product. Before Starbucks, it was hard to find a drinkable cup of coffee in Britain. And although caffeine connoisseurs may sneer at the "coffee-flavoured milk" so beloved of the brand, it's clearly what most buyers want. And it's not just the coffee the customers like, but the whole Starbucks "experience".

Starbucks pioneered the idea of the "third space": the extra place people frequent after home and work. In an attempt to make Starbucks a "home away from home", the café section of the store is often outfitted with comfortable chairs in soft, muted colours and has free electricity outlets for use by customers. Many branches also have wireless internet access, provided on a charge basis by T-Mobile and AT&T.

It's a marketing ploy that has proved irresistible to customers even if they morally object to the store's tactics and ubiquity, and the fact that many Starbucks are occupying a space where independent stores once thrived.

Brighton flight attendant Simon Livingston, 36, sums up the situation neatly. "The way Starbucks is behaving is analogous to George Bush's foreign policy and I hate it. But I'm shallow; we all are. The problem is that you just can't get a soya chocca mocha latte around here except at Starbucks. So I go there."

But Mike Dalley, owner of quirky card shop Cardome on St James's Street, Brighton disagrees. "It's quite simple," he says sadly. "The much-vaunted 'Starbucks experience' is the very undoing of independent businesses. It's wrong and it must be stopped.

Sourced from The Telegraph

The last great British high street

From the park and the pier to the lido, Britain's traditional sights are fast disappearing. In the first of a summer series, Mark Rowe rediscovers shopping as it was before the mall

Sunday, 8 August 2004

"I'm sorry," says John Webber, as he rummages among boxes of home-brew beer kit, looking for a plastic barrel tap. "I really don't know how much these cost. I think they're £1.99. If it turns out to be less than that I'll give you the extra change next time you're in."

"I'm sorry," says John Webber, as he rummages among boxes of home-brew beer kit, looking for a plastic barrel tap. "I really don't know how much these cost. I think they're £1.99. If it turns out to be less than that I'll give you the extra change next time you're in."

Welcome to Gloucester Road, Bristol, one of the last traditional high streets in Britain, where shop staff such as Mr Webber at the wine, spirits and beer shop, Brewer's Droop, smile and bend over backwards to help. That may come as some surprise if you read last week's market report from Yellow Pages, which suggested that the old-fashioned high street is all but dead and buried.

Yellow Pages totted up the number of times each trade was listed between its covers and compared the tally with 1992. Fruit and vegetable shops have suffered the greatest decrease, down by 59 per cent, followed by butchers (40 per cent), hardware shops (34 per cent) and bakers (20 per cent). In contrast, the number of aromatherapists increased by an extraordinary 5,000 per cent.

Gloucester Road is not officially the high street, but that's what locals call it. The shops there serve the community in much the same way that they did half a century ago or more.

The superstores that have obliterated similar retail communities all over the country also lurk nearby (there are two branches of B&Q, for example). Gloucester Road is half a mile from Bristol city centre and the same distance from Broadmead, a Sixties shopping complex. Cribb's Causeway, a vast shopping mall and retail park by the M4 and M5, is four miles away. All these places are busy, and yet somehow the increasingly anachronistic Gloucester Road continues to go about its business.

"It is still essentially little shops," says Mr Webber. A few doors from Brewer's Droop is one of the few art shops in Bristol. Across the road is that rarity: the toy shop. Are bakeries and butcher's shops dying? Gloucester Road has two of each, and three greengrocers. The Breadstore was hugely popular during the Euro 2004 football competition in Portugal when every day it baked a national bread from one of the competing teams, from Latvia to Bulgaria.

There is no Dixons, WH Smith or Top Shop. The one small supermarket, Somerfield, does its best to fit in, prizing diversity over bulk selling. Opposite the Victorian edifice of Bristol North Swimming Baths is Murray's the butcher. Every Saturday, customers form long queues, while organic burgers and sausages sizzle on the shop's pavement barbecue.

"You can buy pretty much anything you need here," says Peter Browne, honorary secretary of the Bishopston Traders Association. "How often do you see a butcher's on a high street nowadays? The baker's has people queuing out of the door, more like a French bread shop. The street has just evolved. I don't know how you could ever replicate it."

Gloucester Road survives because there are middle- class residential areas on either side, he says. "They provide a constant feed of people who would be critical of supermarket shopping and who don't want to travel miles for things. They want a personal service and are willing to pay for it. There's a reaction against the big out-of-town shopping centres where the staff aren't often well-trained and look bored."

Len Griffin of the Alliance of Independent Retailers, which represents 18,000 traders, says their future across most of Britain is uncertain. "More than 85 per cent of grocery sales now come from the main chains. You can't stand in the way of that if you are a local retailer. It's not really about doing a good or a bad job. It's the power of economics."

However, there are a few places where old-fashioned shops still thrive, for idiosyncratic reasons, he says. "In Bristol's case it may be that the small shops have survived because by the time the planning laws were relaxed the big chains had found out-of-town locations."

And Mr Griffin gains hope from the belief that our habits are changing. "People are shopping more like students," he says. "They don't plan so much and don't go out once a month to fill the freezer. That favours the independent traders."

That, and the fact that they really will let you have the extra change next time.

The ironmonger

Bishopston Hardware & DIY, no 211

"Service and expertise are crucial," says Bryan Wiltshire, a partner in the shop, which has operated for the past 40 years. "If someone wants something then we go out of our way to get it." Like cutting wood to individual sizes and charging less for it than the big stores, for example. "We're very proud of what we do."

The butcher

T & P A Murray, no 153

A butcher's shop has stood at no 153 since the start of the 1900s. "Customers often say the flavour of our meat is how food used to taste years ago," says Barry Graham. Organic beefburgers from local farms are a favourite. "We can tell people exactly where our products come from."

The greengrocer

Gardner's Patch, no 159

Fruit'n'veg have been for sale here since the Sixties, says owner Phil Gardner. "Personal service is key. Mothers can come in here with their buggies and shop without hassle." Bunches of locally grown kale are said to be good for their children's brains. "Old ladies who are frightened of going to a big supermarket come here."

The bakery

The Baker's Basket, no 179

"The key is product knowledge," says Philip Fordham. The family-owned shop has fought off supermarket bread for more than two decades. "We change our products every couple of weeks. If we get bored making something, we guess the customers will get bored eating it." Garlic and tomato bread is selling like hot cakes.

The victualler

Brewer's Droop, no 34

"We're the only people around offering home-brew kits," says John Webber, "and we sell organic beers you'd never see in the supermarkets. People just come in for a chat. It makes them more relaxed, and I see that as good business sense."

The art shop

Art Bristol, no 44

"We aim to meet the market for both professionals and residents," says Peter Probyn. "Every inch in our store has to count. We have to be price-competitive but offer choice. The key is to be a niche market. There is no other shop like this locally."

The family solicitor

The Law Shop, no 48

The ground floor of Peter Browne's practice offers a unique service. "The shop helps people who don't want to hire a solicitor. We have a law library with information on dealing with public authorities. This way people don't land themselves with a huge bill."

The toy shop

Totally Toys, no 109

Jan and Paul Carpenter are proud to have survived when others have gone under. "You don't see many toy shops any more," says Mrs Carpenter, whose shelves are full of Meccano kits. "There's still room for a toy shop, and this is a thriving business."

Soured from The Independent

Return of the British high street

 Thu 27 Jul, 2006

...The good old British high street appears to be making something of a comeback as shoppers are returning to city and town centres in increasing numbers...

  
  
- It’s been denigrated by the competition, written-off by social commentators, left for dead by the media and deserted by the consumer. 

- But what’s this – the good old British high street appears to be making something of a comeback as shoppers are returning to city and town centres in increasing numbers.

- Recent research from Key Note found that 77 per cent of people questioned, regularly shop in-town whereas only 44 per cent make regular visits to retail parks and 43.5 per cent make frequent journeys to out-of-town shopping centres. 


Return of the British high street: The big shift


- This is a big difference on three years ago when only 50 per cent of people regularly shopped in-town. This big shift to the high street is partly down to the emergence of new high-quality in-town shopping centres and the refurbishment and extension of existing malls. 

- This investment looks set to continue as a leading commercial property developer recently revealed that for the first time in many years the pipeline of new retail space in-town exceeded that coming on-stream for out-of-town developments.

- Certainly it has (finally) had an effect on the supermarkets, who have started snapping up batches of convenience stores. In addition, the supermarkets are developing outlets focused specifically on homewares and on clothing, some of which may well be sited in town centre locations.

- What has also been picking up pace is the backlash against identikit high streets with the same ubiquitous names – the usual suspects of Dixons, The Carphone Warehouse and Starbucks are all typically present. 

- To offset this, some big names including Tesco (with its Express format) and Vodafone have recently started to play around with tailoring the look of individual stores to their locations.


Return of the British high street: The smaller independents


- Also, some local authorities, working with landlords, have at last started to try and differentiate their high streets by attracting small interesting independents. But what has historically made it difficult for these smaller operators to gain space has been the onerous leasing arrangements entrenched in UK retail property.

- However, things are finally changing as many senior retail property specialists now believe that this rigid rental system is on the way out in order that the UK is brought in-line with the rest of Europe.

- John Bywater, a senior director at major property developer Hammerson, predicts that the old structures will be "demolished" and that we will see a convergence in retail rentals with the UK adopting shorter, more flexible leases, like those seen in France.

- The burgeoning demand for a more varied and vibrant independent mix of retailers on the high street is most prevalent in major city centres as a result of changing social trends which have seen young professionals choosing to live in-town.

- Another potential driver of more local shopping on the high street is the desire by people to reduce car emissions and limit the damage to the environment from the continued building of out-of-town retail emporiums.

Return of the British high street: Convenience


- Research from the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) found that town centres are also benefiting from a variety of other trends such as the average consumers’ increased frequency of shopping as well as the growing trend towards convenience – as clearly recognised by the supermarkets.

- As a result Matalan, which has historically sited its stores in edge-of-town locations, has been losing business to aggressive competitors such as Primark that are located in prime central locations. So the key – as ever in retail - is about the quality of the location: having a prime location on the high street remains an essential ingredient of success.

- The ultimate in convenience shopping is of course the internet and recent research from information systems company CACI has shown that it has had an adverse effect on the high street in certain locations such as Norwich and Nottingham where affluent 30 to 50-years-olds are leading the way with online shopping.

- However, it has also been found by retailers with a multi-channel proposition, such as John Lewis, that shoppers who use more than one channel are significantly more loyal and valuable customers. For such retailers there is clearly an opportunity to use the high street as a complimentary channel to their online store.

Return of the British high street: New trends


- The IGD has also picked up on the growth in the number of smaller households who do not need to religiously undertake a weekly/monthly shop to out-of-town supermarkets but might instead be able to purchase their provisions more frequently and in smaller batches from their local high street. 

- The ageing population is also leading to more local neighbourhood shopping as this demographic is again less likely to jump into their cars to travel out-of-town to shop.

- With all trends leading to the high street it is now up to the retailers to ensure that they provide a tailored range and level of service that is sufficiently attractive to allow the high street to thrive once again. 

- A failure to do so will represent a missed opportunity as many shoppers will find it all too easy to hop back into their gas-guzzling 4x4s and head straight back out-of-town again.

Sourced from The Reckoning

VANISHING BRITAIN:

 The last great British high street

 "I'm sorry," says John Webber, as he rummages among boxes of home- brew beer kit, looking for a plastic barrel tap. "I really don't know how much these cost. I think they're pounds 1.99. If it turns out to be less than that I'll give you the extra change next time you're in."

Welcome to Gloucester Road, Bristol, one of the last traditional high streets in Britain, where shop staff such as Mr Webber at the wine, spirits and beer shop, Brewer's Droop, smile and bend over backwards to help. That may come as some surprise if you read last week's market report from Yellow Pages, which suggested that the old- fashioned high street is all but dead and buried.

Yellow Pages totted up the number of times each trade was listed between its covers and compared the tally with 1992. Fruit and vegetable shops have suffered the greatest decrease, down by 59 per cent, followed by butchers (40 per cent), hardware shops (34 per cent) and bakers (20 per cent). In contrast, the number of aromatherapists increased by an extraordinary 5,000 per cent.

Gloucester Road is not officially the high street, but that's what locals call it. The shops there serve the community in much the same way that they did half a century ago or more.

The superstores that have obliterated similar retail communities all over the country also lurk nearby (there are two branches of B&Q, for example). Gloucester Road is half a mile from Bristol city centre and the same distance from Broadmead, a Sixties shopping complex. Cribb's Causeway, a vast shopping mall and retail park by the M4 and M5, is four miles away. All these places are busy, and yet somehow the increasingly anachronistic Gloucester Road continues to go about its business.

"It is still essentially little shops," says Mr Webber. A few doors from Brewer's Droop is one of the few art shops in Bristol. Across the road is that rarity: the toy shop. Are bakeries and butcher's shops dying? Gloucester Road has two of each, and three greengrocers. The Breadstore was hugely popular during the Euro 2004 football competition in Portugal when every day it baked a national bread from one of the competing teams, from Latvia to Bulgaria.

There is no Dixons, WH Smith or Top Shop. The one small supermarket, Somerfield, does its best to fit in, prizing diversity over bulk selling. Opposite the Victorian edifice of Bristol North Swimming Baths is Murray's the butcher. Every Saturday, customers form long queues, while organic burgers and sausages sizzle on the shop's pavement barbecue.

"You can buy pretty much anything you need here," says Peter Browne, honorary secretary of the Bishopston Traders Association. "How often do you see a butcher's on a high street nowadays? The baker's has people queuing out of the door, more like a French bread shop. The street has just evolved. I don't know how you could ever replicate it."

Gloucester Road survives because there are middle- class residential areas on either side, he says. "They provide a constant feed of people who would be critical of supermarket shopping and who don't want to travel miles for things. They want a personal service and are willing to pay for it. There's a reaction against the big out- of-town shopping centres where the staff aren't often well-trained and look bored."

Len Griffin of the Alliance of Independent Retailers, which represents 18,000 traders, says their future across most of Britain is uncertain. "More than 85 per cent of grocery sales now come from the main chains. You can't stand in the way of that if you are a local retailer. It's not really about doing a good or a bad job. It's the power of economics."

However, there are a few places where old-fashioned shops still thrive, for idiosyncratic reasons, he says. "In Bristol's case it may be that the small shops have survived because by the time the planning laws were relaxed the big chains had found out-of-town locations."

And Mr Griffin gains hope from the belief that our habits are changing. "People are shopping more like students," he says. "They don't plan so much and don't go out once a month to fill the freezer. That favours the independent traders."

That, and the fact that they really will let you have the extra change next time.

The ironmonger

Bishopston Hardware & DIY, no 211

"Service and expertise are crucial," says Bryan Wiltshire, a partner in the shop, which has operated for the past 40 years. "If someone wants something then we go out of our way to get it." Like cutting wood to individual sizes and charging less for it than the big stores, for example. "We're very proud of what we do."

The butcher

T & P A Murray, no 153

A butcher's shop has stood at no 153 since the start of the 1900s. "Customers often say the flavour of our meat is how food used to taste years ago," says Barry Graham. Organic beefburgers from local farms are a favourite. "We can tell people exactly where our products come from."

The greengrocer

Gardner's Patch, no 159

Sourced from Find Articles