mike coupe argos sainsbury's

Poor Mr Coupe. I don’t quite understand his Big Brainy Strategy (something about vectorising his transactional interchanges), but it’s Mr Lewis who is picking up all the doorstops at the Grocer Gold awards. So I’m not sure how I feel about Sainsbury’s owning me, or a piece of me, or telling me what to do.

I’ve run a shop for the past 40 years or so and I’ve managed to get by without customer insight, especially the granular stuff. Is that better than demerara? On the other hand, I do know what everyone wants to buy and I try to keep it in stock at the highest price they are prepared to pay for the convenience. Sort of works, most of the time.

In any case, it must be galling for Mr Coupe to have to dip into the money he saved from ditching the Paralympic sponsorship to try and buy Lots More Shops, given how old-fashioned that kind of thing is. Getting into a bidding war with Mr Murrells over a bunch of corner stores is a bit unseemly, too, I would have thought.

If it was me, I’d probably be thinking about moving into the discount business instead. Surely there must be some derelict old discount brands out there that could use the failsafe Sainsbury’s touch? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

My friend Mehmet, who runs one of only 13 Sainsbury’s Locals within five minutes of here, says Mr Coupe has got the willies now that Amazon is buying all nine Whole Foods Market stores in the UK. Apparently he lies in bed at night grinding his teeth and muttering “Bezos”.

It sounds to me like some kind of bad dream about unspeakable aliens with sticky-out ears, speaking in a bizarre, incomprehensible tongue, punctuated by a maniacal cackle. Surely there’s some kind of strategy to fend him off?