We’ve all been food shopping, it’s usually most people’s least favourite chore, but it needs to be done. It was always a lot different going shopping with your parents when you were little and having absolutely no worries about what the bill was going to cost. As an adult though, it’s a lot different, you end up checking the price of things and comparing everything to the cheaper versions.
Nowadays, we’ve got good old B&M Bargains and Quality Save where you can get bargain bits and bobs for your house or we’ve got ALDI and Lidl for bargain food shops. ALDI seems to be all the rage at the moment, with people sacking off Tesco and ASDA for a much cheaper weekly shop at ALDI.
But what about the food stores from the past? Remember Safeway? I bet you’ve forgotten all about some of these stores. Let’s take a step back in time & see how many of these food shops you remember from the 90s…
1. Safeway
Safeway came from American company Safeway Inc. We hold Safeway close to our hearts and had to say goodbye to the legendary supermarket back in 2004, can you believe it? That was when it merged into Morrisons…but it just doesn’t seem the same does it.
2. Kwik Save
Kwik Save was perfect for people who needed to grab some shopping quickly. Like the morning people or loo roll. Sadly, Kwik Save just couldn’t compete with supermarkets like ASDA and Tesco when they started to introduce all sorts of brands.
Supermarkets like ALDI and Lidl also came over the Britain which made it too hard for Kwik Save to compete. In 2012, it was renamed and launched again as Costcutter though, so we’ve not lost it completely!
3. Deep Pan Pizza
Deep Pan Pizza just didn’t do that well and by 1998 we hardly ever saw any on our high streets. The Restaurant Group, the owners of the chain, might have scrapped this store but there are other restaurants like Chiquito’s, Coast to Coast and Frankie and Benny’s which are owned by the same company.
4. Gateway
When Gateway went, it led the way to Somerfield’s success. So it was kind of a bittersweet ending as from it going it brought one of the best supermarkets going. Gateway was phased out in 1994 and the stores became Somerfields.
The company became so big it was even able to buy Kwik Save in 1998 for £473 million. What a huge purchase, though they didn’t convert all the Kwik Saves to Somerfield’s because they were a lot smaller and would need full refurbishments.
5. Littlewoods
Littlewoods started out as a football pools company in 1923 and was called Littlewood Pools back then. After it didn’t meet its success, the store expanded into the shop we knew and loved. It’s only available online now and it’s just not the same really… There are some good deals to be had online but we all miss going to the store as part of a shopping trip. Looking back they were a very big name and employed 22,000 people at one time and in 1982 it was the largest private company in Europe!
6. Netto
Netto still exists in mainland Europe, but we certainly miss it over here! It was an alternative to ALDI and Lidl. In 2010, Netto was bought by ASDA and all of the stores had disappeared by 2016. We all remember the logo with the dog on the front of it, don’t we!
It’s a shame it’s gone but I think Aldi and Lidl are doing a better job at offering us amazing deals on our normal supermarket shop. It was brought in in 1990 and only lasted 26 years in the UK with 193 stores up and down the country.
7. Woolworths
Woolworths was the place to go on a Saturday. Everyone, no matter your age, loved this shop and you couldn’t walk into the shop without buying something. It was like the B&M Bargains of today. Who still craves the pick n mix sweets today? No other store could deliver, not even Wilkinsons could…The shop didn’t make it through the recession very well and in 2009, the shop that was known for selling pretty much everything and anything you could look for disappeared.
It felt like the whole country had a day of mourning for the store leaving the high street and it was an extremely sad time for everybody. Nowadays people still refer to places as ‘where Woolworth’s used to be’ cause it was one of the most well-known places in town.
8. Somerfield
Somerfield will always remind me of Hot Fuzz. It definitely got more popular after it made a badass cameo in the comedy movie. The brand was founded 1875, all those years ago! It was so big at one point it bought Kwik Save, but it was finally sold to Co-Op in 2009 for a H U G E £1.57 billion.
It’s sad to see all these shops disappear as we get closer and closer to having just the ‘big 4’ shops on every street corner in the county, we miss the old ones!
9. TJ Hughes
This department store chain sold us all sorts of things at discounted prices from fragrance to cosmetics, home and fashion and electrical goods to name a few. Unfortunately, like Woolworths, it struggled through the recession and A LOT of people lost their jobs.
They’ve luckily made a recovery and are rebuilding their foundations. It’s one of the few 90s shops that have made a return and we hope it does really well in the future! It returning is good news for all of us and we hope it returns to its former glory!
10. Wimpy
Back in the day, Wimpy had over 500 stores across the UK. It was probably one of the first BIG fast food joints to hit the UK back in the late 70s/early 80s so it proved to be extremely popular, especially among young kids. You couldn’t walk down a high street without seeing a Wimpy and it was always filled with people getting something to eat. It’s a shame they’re not about any more!
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