Forget beef pies and pasties. Think dill drizzle, high class wines and balsamic blueberries. Morrisons has signalled it is intending to revamp its Home Counties supermarket stores with a stylish makeover and a bigger presence - 60% of its new outlets will be in the south.

Is this a convincing move upmarket for the Bradford grocer?

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The (not so) common touch

It will need to be if Morrisons, a store better known for no-nonsense cooked meat products and value-for-money basics, wants to compete with the likes of Ocado and Waitrose. Morrisions is also paving the way for a move online.

New stores are being built in Croydon, Harrow and Colindale, North London. The next three years will see its southern presence bring an extra two million households within a 15 minute drive of its stores, it claims.

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But any move upmarket will need to be carefully choreographed given the huge pressure many consumers are under. "We are seeing shoppers skipping meals so they can save cash to feed their children," Morrisons boss Dalton Philips told the Mail. "They are hiding treats around the house to ration them through the week, dipping into savings and recycling their clothes."

Online presence

Not the kind of customer profile which typically splashes out on £15 bottles of wine or lamb shanks with redcurrant and rosemary jus. Yet.

There is also intimations from the Morrisons boss that the supermarket is set to make a significant foray into online retail. The move online is being aided by a 10% stake in US food website FreshDirect - boss Dalton Philips confirmed Morrisons staff had learnt much from a recent Stateside FreshDirect visit.

"Multi-format, multi-channel" is just one of the phrases peppered on a Morrisons press briefing, plus "experiential over purely functional" and "skills not just drills". There's ambition behind the jargon.

10 biggest companies in the world

  • 1. Walmart
    <p> Wal-Mart Stores, or Walmart, is an American retailer that runs chains of discount department and warehouse stores around the world.</p> <p> The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and first traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas and has around 8,500 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names.</p>
    1. Walmart
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    <p> Royal Dutch Shell, more commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in Holland, but with its registered office in London.</p> <p> With operations in more than 90 countries, it is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.</p>
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    <p> Exxon Mobil Corporation, or ExxonMobil, is an American oil and gas corporation formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas.</p> <p> With 37 oil refineries in 21 countries, Exxon Mobil Corporation is the largest refiner in the world.</p>
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    <p> BP is yet another global oil and gas company, this time headquartered in London. It has operations in more than 80 countries, produces about 3.8 million barrels of oil per day and has 22,400 service stations worldwide.</p> <p> The name BP is derived from the initials of one of the company's former legal names, British Petroleum.</p>
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    <p> China National Petroleum Corporation is a state-owned fuel-producing corporation and the largest integrated oil and gas company in China. It has its headquarters in Beijing.</p> <p> CNPC - the parent company of PetroChina - was created in 17 September 1988 when the government decided to disband the Ministry of Petroleum and create a state owned company to handle all Petroleum activities in China.</p>
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    <p> Toyota Motor Corporation, more commonly known simply as Toyota, is a multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota, Japan.</p> <p> The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries. Its brands include Toyota, Lexus and Daihatsu.</p>
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    <p> Japan Post Holdings is a state-owned Japanese company that deals with mail delivery and financial services.</p> <p> It is headquartered in Tokyo and was founded on January 23, 2006.</p>
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    10. Chevron


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