The (very long) brass neck of it... In a move calculated to strike fear into the heart of middle-class parents everywhere, Tesco has bought the child-friendly, eye-searing restaurant chain Giraffe for a shade under £50m. Reasons include the ongoing shake-up of supermarkets in general and Tesco in particular to appeal once again to a certain type of consumer, as well as its own personal crusade to 'supermarket-ise' seemingly uniquely-branded products. Those with a finger on the pulse will remember the outcry earlier this year when the oh-so-trendy coffee shop Harris & Hoole in North London turned out to be a wholly Tesco-owned enterprise and it will come as no surprise to find the coffee shops in store shortly, as if Tesco can no longer be bothered to keep up the pretence. Apparently trendy bakery chain Euphorium is now also backed by the supermarket.
It's easy to see why Tesco dunnit; less so to understand why (retained) founders Russell and Juliett Joffe sold their 54% stake. Tesco apparently wants to attract more customers to dine in-store: fair enough, but why that means they need to hijack one of the few child-oriented independents rather than create their own, we don't follow. It's a strange kind of logic that sees the path between the recent massive self-induced failure of trust between supermarkets and customers and the sudden maniacal buying up of small independents: it's as if the creative minds at Tesco are genuinely struggling to come up with ideas ("How are these places drawing families/middle-income earners/people who just like bread in??? We have NO IDEA. JUST BUY THEM") on how to service the general public, or apparently attract what they seem to view as a different class of consumer (we're all Aldi now).
On the other hand, could this be a sneaky new way to finance failing small chains (not actually the case with Giraffe who are due to open their 48th nationwide restaurant) rather than letting them crumble to dust on the high street? Are Tesco one step ahead sensing that without our regular custom these stores might not be around much longer (would that that were the case with Starbucks...)? Are they actually on some crazy path to enlightenment, saving soon-to-be-extinct species for future generations? Will we all, in fact, be grateful 10 years from now for their timely intervention? Or like in Wall-E, will we be so weeble-ified that our entire consumer lives are dominated by behemoths like Tesco?
It will be interesting to see if their idea works, not least to see if Giraffe manage to resist the octopus-reaches of supermarket branding and homogenisation that are characteristics-in-chief of a supermarket. Will there be a backlash or indeed not, given the paucity of genuinely child-welcoming restaurants in the UK? And will it make you change your mind or do you see this as the gradual creeping McDonaldisation of the retail and restaurant industries that simply can't be avoided?
