Edge of town stores

The first Sainsbury’s store in Cambridge opened in Sydney Street in 1925 to much excitement.

There were so many visitors to the new shop that Sainsbury’s had to issue an apology in the press the next day. On 3rd December 1974 this success was echoed with the opening of a new store at Coldham’s Lane, on the eastern edge of Cambridge.

This was the first Sainsbury’s store not to be built in a town centre and was an experiment in response to increasing difficulties in securing planning for new town centre retail developments. The new store was located in a non-residential area and so shoppers needed the use of a car to get to the store. Twenty minutes before opening, concerns grew as nobody had turned up at the new store. Then suddenly the 376-space car park filled and long queues emerged outside of the store, breaking all records for opening customer numbers.

John D Sainsbury described the new store as ‘the sort of store our customers want’. The 24,000 square foot sales area allowed space for an extensive range of fresh and frozen foods, along with an off-license, clothing range, household goods, hardware and electrical goods, delicatessen counter and in-store bakery.

The new store was also home to the first Sainsbury’s petrol station, which opened two weeks after the store itself and offered customers six self-service pumps.

The Coldham’s Lane opening was an important development in Sainsbury’s history. It became the first Sainsbury’s to take £1million in a single week and on two occasions in the 1990s  the store had to be closed as it had become dangerously busy.

Its popularity also highlighted a shift in shopping patterns. With the growing use of cars, customers could easily access more distant locations and buy more in any one trip. Out of town locations offered the opportunity for larger stores, which provided more choice for the customer, along with economies of scale for the company. They were therefore both more popular and more profitable than those in cramped high street locations.

However, the modern edge-of-town facilities were intended to complement, rather than replace high street shopping. Older high street branches continued to provide an important service in many towns, notably Guildford High Street, where Sainsbury’s counter service shop had opened in 1906 and was converted to self-service in 1962/3. Despite the opening of the large Burpham store on the edge of the town in 1985, the High Street shop continued to trade profitably, and was completely refitted in 1990.