Tesco has opened its first joint Tesco Extra and Dobbies garden centre store at Kings Lynn’s Hardwick Park.

A population of 42,800, the terminus of a railway line that starts at London’s King’s Cross and an end-of-the-world-before-you-fall-off flatness, perched as it is on the northern edge of the Fens. The place? King’s Lynn - home to two branches of Asda, a pair of Sainsbury’s, an Aldi, a Lidl, a Morrisons and a host of Tesco stores including, since last week, a Tesco Extra/Dobbies hybrid.

Some might say that, since Tesco purchased the Edinburgh-headquartered garden centre chain more than half a decade ago, this new store has been some time in the making.

The store is just across the road from a Sainsbury’s that was considered state-of-the-art when it opened at the end of last year.

It probably still is, but the question for the management of Sainsbury’s, judging by the amount of cars in the Tesco car park on opening day, is whether the blandishments of an Extra coupled with a garden centre will mean some kind of rethink is required if it is to remain competitive.

Conjoined but distinctive

Standing outside the new Extra it is hard not to be impressed. The combined might of an 80,000 sq ft Tesco and an almost equally large Dobbies means the frontage seems to extend for miles. And there is a seeming equality between these two fascias that have been yoked together, since in the middle of the frontage their two logos have been given equal visual weight.

The exterior of the store follows the ‘woodtastic’ template that is now pretty well established across the Tesco portfolio.

The entrance to both the Extra and Dobbies is via an atrium midway along the frontage. This is distinguished both by its height relative to the rest of the building and the fact that it is not hidden under a canopy, as the rest of the windows along the front are.

In front of the entrance, on low wooden display units, there are potted plants. A blackboard beneath them reads ‘Please purchase this item at Dobbies’. The store may be a joint effort, but the two retailers clearly feel that guidance may be required for shoppers.

Two become one

Enter the store, however, and there is little confusion about what’s where. To the left, a square wooden entrance
has a sign stating ‘Welcome to Tesco King’s Lynn Hardwick’. To the right another entrance, this time clad in foliage, says simply ‘Dobbies Garden Centre and Restaurant’.

Between the two there is a large, spacious area beneath the atrium that has entrances to both the Dobbies
cafe and the Dobbies restaurant.

The former is a pretty standard tea, coffee and cake offer, while the latter, which is hidden from atrium view, is
a family restaurant.

Simon Threadkell, Tesco design and formats director, says the reason the two ostensibly disparate parts of this store work is because the two worked together. He explains: “We have our own design treatment and they have theirs, but we did meet weekly as a design team. We are two brands but one company.”

He adds: “We designed the building together from the landscape and the external architecture. All in all, it works really well together.”

Warmer and friendlier

Threadkell says the aim was to avoid any sense of the utilitarian, and both parts of the store are intended to be ‘warmer’ and ‘friendlier’ than would have been the case 18 months ago.

He also says the layout of the area at the front of Tesco had to be tweaked in order to accommodate an entrance at a 45-degree angle to the atrium. That meant equipment had to be repositioned in order to permit adequate sightlines into the store.

Deeper into the Tesco Extra part of the store, the selling space is a lot like many other larger branches that have appeared lately.

The wood frame, light-green food-to-go areas and displays with wicker baskets (Marks & Spencer’s Simply Food visual merchandising may have provided an inspiration here) show off Tesco Finest merchandise.

As in other new Tesco shops, the store template makes the most of natural daylight thanks to the glazed frontage that runs the length of the store, which is good from an environmental point of view.

Greater than the sum of its parts

Cross the atrium to Dobbies and the shopper might be in Aberdeen, where there is a branch of the garden centre of a similar size that looks remarkably like this one.

The fact that in this instance it has been tacked onto a large hypermarket is broadly immaterial - it has the same interior feel with books, plants and gifts, a transitional area mainly comprising pot plants and an external space with hardier plants.

The real question is whether all of this is needed in a town the size of King’s Lynn - and will it work?

King’s Lynn has a relatively modest population, but it has a large catchment area that boosts its possible customer base to a little under 150,000.

Residents of west Norfolk have a choice between King’s Lynn or a 44-mile drive to Norwich, which is the next big place on the map.

That probably means Tesco will thrive, and its gargantuan size means others may suffer as a result.

The other point is that by locking in a Dobbies as part of the offer, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Including a garden centre in a hypermarket proposition is not quite as outlandish as it might seem - both are regularly seen on retail parks, albeit not as a single unit.

By fusing the two, Tesco makes it easier for the transition to be made from one shop to the other and there are opportunities for cross-merchandising between the brands - although this has yet to be realised in King’s Lynn.

Given the general trend towards smaller units, the number of opportunities for a dual-store opening on this scale will inevitably be limited and will take some time to be realised in the current climate, but this looks like it could be a winning formula for west Norfolk.

Tesco/Dobbies, Hardwick Road, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

  • Opened October 24
  • Fascia Joint Tesco Extra and Dobbies garden centre
  • Design In-house teams