Some grocers are rushing to open a c-store on every street corner, but retail is a sector of many parts and big shops still matter.

Why do certain things become ‘lore’ in retail? One of the current food retail axioms is that if you’re not in the convenience game, you’re probably not in the game.

The thinking is that the best players in supermarket retailing have adapted to changing shopper habits by ensuring that their outlets are to be found on almost every street corner.

This may be an effective way of getting market share, as long as everyone else isn’t doing it. And this in turn may be why Tesco and Sainsbury’s appear to have convenience stores wherever you happen to be. They’re quick to build, easy to stock and each has its own trading pattern unique to an area’s demographic, local employment and relative wealth.

On this basis you’d think it was a bandwagon onto which every retailer would be leaping. Yet in spite of the manifest attractions of this as a form of retail, Asda and Morrisons have done little more than dip their toes in the water as far as opening stores is concerned and now the latter is ridding itself of what was a fledgling operation.

Big stores are still big business

Yet retail pundits are fond of racing from the particular to the general and so in spite of the fact that two of the big four are not really participants of scale in the convenience stakes, the thinking is be convenient or perish.

At this point it is fair to observe that these have been parlous times for Morrisons, and Asda has been feeling the breeze as last week’s update made clear, so perhaps they really do have other fish to fry.

“There is no escaping the fact that big shopping trips to big shops still matter”

John Ryan

That said, as one of the more regular pundits on Twitter commented last week, large, edge-of-town stores are “still a huge part of anyone’s business”. He goes on to remark that it is fashionable to “blame big shops” for poor results, but there is no escaping the fact that big shopping trips to big shops still matter.

It is also worth remembering the clamour that surrounded the revamp of Tesco’s hypermarket in Watford and the opinion that it was a template for the future. To an extent, it still is. Visit it on any day and the car park is generally full.

Look beyond the easily digested aphorisms and subject retail to the kind of scrutiny it deserves. There is more to retail life than small shops, even if they are indeed approaching ubiquity.