This year, Checkout commemorates its 40th anniversary under its current ownership, and with this in mind, every week, Retail Intelligence is going to ‘reel in the years’ and publish a story from our extensive archives. This week, we look at the arrival of a new Tesco outlet close to the retailer’s head office in Dun Laoghaire.
Just over one month in operation, Bloomfields is believed to have achieved its objective of taking business away from Superquinn in Blackrock, and to a lesser extent, Dunnes in Cornelscourt.
One Quinnsworth insider said that Superquinn had been “crucified” by the business being done at the new outlet, despite the Blackrock store’s sparkling new revamp.
However, the same insider admitted that it was “early days yet, and the trick will be to build on the success of the first weeks; which probably had something to do with the novelty value of the new offering”.
Other industry watchers say that Bloomfields is the right store in the wrong location: “The Merrion Centre was the idea place to introduce the notion of a ‘food hall’ because the customer base is almost entirely made up of ABs – at the food tastings in Bloomfields, most customers didn’t know what they were eating. That wouldn’t be the case in Merrion. But Powers/Tesco are determined to get big results from Bloomfields because of the money they’ve poured into its development.”
Nobody was able to comment on what effect Bloomfields would have on the existing Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre, which has Quinnsworth as its anchor tenant.
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