Are supermarkets morphing into community centres?

Where is the heart of your local community? The village or town hall? The Library? Or perhaps now it is the largest local supermarket.

I’m old enough to remember when supermarkets sold groceries. Just groceries. A trip to the local Co-op, Asda or Safeway took 20-30 minutes and we’d come back with bags filled only with food and drink.

Over time, and with increasing speed. the major supermarkets have moved rapidly to develop what they call their “non-food” offer. The expansion of the product range to include clothing, books, music, electrical items and most other consumer goods meant a substantial increase in the average size of supermarkets. Add to that the in-store offer of financial services (insurance, savings etc), travel services, in-store Starbucks concessions, and you can see why the large local supermarkets have become destinations in their own right.

An article in the news today developed the “non-food” service further. Sainsbury’s has announced that it is to set up the first GPs’ surgery in a supermarket.

Sainsbury’s at Heaton Park will run the medical centre in a six-month trial, providing doctors in normal business hours and during two evenings and Saturdays. The GPs working from a fully equipped consultation room at Sainsbury’s instore pharmacy will have full access to patients’ records via their own laptops and be able to make referrals or update records.

It all sounds like a great idea. My local Sainsbury’s is full of potential customers for a GP practice; they like the warm, welcoming environment of both a supermarket and a medical centre, so it seems logical to combine both services in one location!