Supermarket board’s urge to take on Aldi and Lidl ignored how long it took discounters to master the brief
“We have learnt a huge amount from Jack’s,” said Jason Tarry, chief executive of Tesco UK and Ireland, as he pulled the plug on the group’s experiment in running an Aldi copycat format. One lesson is probably an old one: pure discounting is best left to specialists.
Trying to run a limited-range discount chain is hard when your core business is, and always will be, mainstream grocery retailing. Sainsbury’s had a go a few years back in partnership with Danish group Netto and also got nowhere. In Tesco’s case, only 13 Jack’s outlets appeared, so no more than the 10-15 billed as “an initial phase” by former chief executive Dave Lewis back in 2018. It suggests the case for expanding Jack’s never got close to borderline.
