Merseyside has welcomed many popular and well-known supermarkets over the years - but a number of them are now confined to the history books.
Today, customers across the region will head to the likes of Asda, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and more for their weekly shop or essentials and be able to find one not too far. But decades ago, these were the supermarkets that called our high streets home.
For some, they were a shoppers first experience in a supermarket. For others, they were a place of work where colleagues made friends for life.
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Some of the businesses were acquired by other companies or saw massive chains we know today take over their units. Here, we take a look back at a number of lost supermarkets we no longer see in Merseyside.
This list is not intended to be comprehensive, we've selected a number of brands lost to the past. But if you have any suggestions of others we might have missed, let us know in the comments section.
Presto
Many will remember once shopping at a Presto supermarket, which was a big brand name from the early 1960s to late 1980s. A division of a larger company called Allied Suppliers Ltd, the company was said to have been looking for a name for a new discount shopping store there and later decided to remove the ‘n’ from Preston in North Tyneside to create the name Presto.
A major name in the retail world, many will remember Presto had its own memorable TV advert catchphrase - 'you'll be impressed at Presto.' But by the late 1980s, many of the supermarkets became Safeway stores and the name was briefly revived before disappearing for good in the late 1990s.
Somerfield
Somerfield arrived on the scene in 1991 with the first store opening in Nottingham - and it wasn’t long before the supermarket chain popped up all over the UK, including right here in Liverpool and Wirral.
The company was first known as Gateway Foodmarkets in the 1960s, later being known simply as Gateway and a number of acquisitions and restructuring in the company, the Somerfield name and brand was born in 1990. Unfortunately, all Somerfields had closed by the end of 2011 after the company was bought by the Co-operative group.
Do you remember these supermarkets? Let us know in the comments section below.
Lennon's
The Lennon's empire began in 1900 when Mr Frank Lennon established his grocery and provisions businesses in St Helens and until the early 1950s, the family ran a small group of traditional-style grocery shops. But in 1958, one of Frank's sons, Terence Lennon, paid a visit to America and studied grocery selling methods there.
When he returned, he laid the plans for converting Lennon shops to self service and it soon became a public company, seeing old cinemas like the Scala in Ormskirk Street, St Helens and The Lyme House, in Eccleston Street, Prescot, bought and converted into supermarkets. The chain progressed rapidly and Lennon’s started adding off-licences, selling cut-price drinks and many will remember its Wavertree store near to the famous landmark, Picton Clock Tower which opened in the 80s
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Kwik Save
Kwik Save, with its familiar logo of white block italics against a red background, grew to become a common site in Britain after the first store opened in Rhyl in 1959. The business adopted the model of successful continental supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl, buying a limited range of goods on favourable payment terms.
The chain continued to expand, and by the mid-1990s, they had more than 800 stores spanning the country with Liverpool's most prominent Kwik Save store on Hanover Street in Liverpool city centre. The stores were primarily aimed at the lower end of the market and vanished from our high streets in the 00s - but these days, a Kwik Save bag in good condition will fetch over £20 on auction site eBay.
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Netto
Before budget supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl became popular in the UK - there was Netto. First opened in Leeds in December 1990, Netto was part of the Danish company Salling Group.
The yellow and black discount shop was ahead of its time in many ways, but at the time of its peak trade, its bright yellow carrier bags left some kids mortified and would cause punchlines across school playgrounds. All the stores closed for good in the UK in August 2016., but the discount supermarket still operates in Denmark, Germany and Poland with over 1,400 stores.
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