An £8.99 jar of peaches in moscato or a £4.99 bag of pasta might sound more at home in Harrods food hall than in Stratford E15.

An £8.99 jar of peaches in moscato or a £4.99 bag of pasta might sound more at home in Harrods food hall than in Stratford E15. Yet you can buy both at the new Marks & Spencer food hall in Westfield Stratford City.

It’s a good job both products have a long shelf life, as the store probably won’t sell many of either. But it’s the principle that’s important and that is that Marc Bolland wants to show off what makes shopping at M&S special. With the food halls unveiled at Stratford and Kensington this week, that’s exactly what he’s done.

M&S will never be the cheapest place to buy food, so it needs to offer something different. Having in-store bakeries which actually bake bread and a strong deli counter are the sort of things M&S should be all about.

In fashion, Bolland has set out to create distinctive areas for M&S’s different brands. He’s rightly identified that shoppers don’t identify with the individual sub-brands, and is confident that will change with the clearer branding and zoning in the new format stores.

Seasoned M&S watchers will say we’ve been here before. The pendulum has swung back and forward between the brands and the brand over the past decade, while a small fortune was spent on store refits in the Rose era only for Bolland to take a completely different approach.

The format unveiled this week was very good, especially in food. The GM brands will no doubt benefit. But, ultimately, there’s only one brand which determines the success or failure of M&S and it’s one that needs to be cherished. And that’s Marks & Spencer itself.

If John Lewis were a quoted company it would have been crucified by the City for its 50% fall in first-half profits this week. But while no one in Victoria Street will be celebrating, its strategy of investing both in price to ensure it remains Never Knowingly Undersold, and in developing its stores and its online offer, is the right one, despite the impact on the bottom line.

For most retailers, the current climate is about growing profits through cost reduction as sales fall. The unique structure of John Lewis and Waitrose allows them to do the reverse. As the strength with which they emerged from the recession showed, it means they will be well-placed when consumer confidence returns.