Morri’s surprised many people in Blackburn when they pulled out of their move across the road to the old Thwaites’ Brewery site. But maybe an alternative had already been found within their current premises.
Over a period of time a strange phenomenon has begun to take place in this superstore. Tables started appearing in the walkways with assorted items on sale. These started off with bakery products, including fruit pies, cakes and bread. Then various other items started springing up in more places around the superstore walkways, the latest item to be on sale is garden and other furniture.
Going off on a tangent in relation to the instillation of furniture sales, what was very annoying was Morri’s removing their benches from where you entered the superstore from Railway Road. They were a nice place to have a sit down after finishing your shopping, or before starting it.
With so many older and infirm people shopping in this superstore, it was nice to have somewhere where you could have a sit down to catch your breath and recuperate. Sadly, they may have been seen as taking up too much room and another sales outlet could be installed there in the future.
This use of walkways as shopping aisles has raised murmurs about access for disabled users, especially those who use wheelchairs, along with people pushing prams and pushchairs. Although there does seem to be enough room for users of various wheeled conveyances. After all, plenty of similar sized shopping trolleys are pushed around the superstore every day.
Today’s retail industry is very cut-throat and competitive, particularly amongst the largest supermarket groups. No doubt any opportunity to maximise profits through not spending money on building new premises can be seen by some as good business sense. With the rise of online shopping and home delivery expected to keep on growing, some retail outlets are more likely to downsize than expand.
As one of Britain’s major supermarket groups, Morri’s is bound to tick all the boxes as regards health & safety and being disabled friendly. But it’s addition of new sales outlets in its walkways may lead to the superstore starting to feel claustrophobic in certain places.
This cannot be conducive to improving their customers’ overall shopping experience. But then again it doesn’t take people long to get used to new shopping practices. Shoplifters certainly do and will be all in favour of these new sales outlets in the walkways.