They were once a popular destination for Britons longing for a quick and easy hot meal at a bargain price.
Then came the rise of social media, which diminished customer rates (after all, a trip to your local Tesco for a fry-up wasn’t aesthetic enough to post on Instagram), earnings and food quality, with Sainsbury’s shuttering its cafes altogether last year.
Today, however, tells a different story: supermarket cafes are back competing with a brand-spanking-new image and offerings… and are seemingly better than ever.
Among the stores heading the change is Tesco, which has revamped its cafes to a spec one would expect in a hip, Scandi-inspired lunch spot on a posh high street.
They’re technically advanced, too; customers no longer have to head to the cashier to place an order but can simply scroll through a screen to secure their Harissa Halloumi Flatbread, Turkish-style Eggs, or Tiramisu French Toast.
And if you think those dishes sound swish, get a load of their new Springtime drinks, including White Chocolate & Lavender Iced Matcha (reminiscent of the trending offerings at middle-class favourite Blank Street), Raspberry Hibiscus Spritz, and Raspberry Iced Chocolate.
The chain introduced 30 new and improved items across 320 stores in time for spring in a bid to bolster its focus on elevating its cafe offering. Prices, by today’s rates, are relatively reasonable, with breakfast items ranging from £3 to £10.
And it’s not just Tesco: M&S cafe, with its trend-led food and bold marketing, is experiencing a similar resurgence, with one of its 1,700 baristas across the UK and Ireland serving a hot drink every 90 seconds.
Supermarket cafes are on trend again, with influencers, including Poppy Olive (pictured), raving about them online
Planning for the cafe’s revival goes back as far as 2024 when M&S bosses rolled out training for kitchen staff to speed up food preparation and improved technology for faster order placements.
The revamp formed part of M&S’s plan to win over shoppers from rivals like Pret, as the group explained it was seeking to ‘build on our position as one of the top high-street cafes’, according to Retail Gazette.
M&S, much like Tesco, has redesigned its menu to appeal to younger generations, with items like the Pistachio Latte, Iced Pineapple Matcha, and high-protein products like the 11g High Protein Chicken and Greens.
Prices are much like one would expect at a typical, non-supermarket cafe. At the Nottingham location, prices include £9.95 Smoky Tomato Baked Eggs, £11.95 Katsu Chicken Burger, and £4.20 Buttered Popcorn Latte.
With its trendy food items, it’s perhaps of little surprise that influencers have flocked to Tesco and M&S to get a taste.
In a clip that gained more than 11 thousand likes, influencer Poppy Olive took her followers along with her when she visited Tesco – and told them it’s, ‘Your sign to take a trip to Tesco cafe.’
Her thoughts? ‘I fear this is going to become a regular,’ she said, adding that ‘the interiors are boujee, it was not a supermarket cafe at all’.
While her food, which included two iced drinks and two breakfast items, was ’10 out of 10′, she did note that the £19.80 bill could have been more ‘affordable’.
Mother and daughter Sheila and Tia, who go by @queensheilaxo on TikTok and boast more than 140 thousand followers, raved about the M&S coffee
Content creator @tanayagreenn (pictured) from Nottingham told her followers that M&S cafe is ‘always a shout’
Meanwhile, other influencers @tanayagreenn and @queensheilaxo raved about M&S, saying: ‘M&S cafe is always a shout’ and ‘Since when do M&S do the nicest coffee’.
But while M&S and Tesco cash in on trends, other supermarkets that stuck with tradition have fallen behind, including Sainsbury’s.
Last January, Sainsbury’s announced the closure of all its remaining in-store cafes as part of a major overhaul, which also saw 3,000 jobs axed.
At the time, Simon Roberts, chief executive of the supermarket group, said the company was making the cuts as it attempts to slash spending by £1billion a year in the face of a ‘particularly challenging cost environment’.
Mr Roberts claimed Sainsbury’s shoppers no longer used their cafes regularly, whereas in-store food halls and concessions run by their ‘specialist partners’ had grown in popularity.
The retailer also closed its remaining patisserie, hot food and pizza counters in-store and shifted the most popular items from there into regular shopping aisles as part of the shake-up.
The supermarket boss added: ‘As we accelerate into year two and beyond of our strategy, we are facing a particularly challenging cost environment, which means we have had to make tough choices about where we can afford to invest and where we need to do things differently to make our business more efficient and effective.
‘The decisions we are announcing today are essential to ensure we continue to drive forward our momentum but have also meant some difficult choices impacting our dedicated colleagues in a number of parts of our business.’
