After a hectic week for food and the grocery market in general, the papers are a little quieter today on the industry. However, there is still room for more column inches on the big story of the week: Tesco’s annual results.

The Telegraph’s Graham Ruddick thinks CEO Dave Lewis should be held to the same standards as much-maligned former boss Philip Clarke when it comes to margins. Clarke was ridiculed when told an investor day last year that the “margin will be what the margin will be”. Gone are the days of a 5.2% profit margin – the industry average today is about 3% at best – but Lewis refused to sbe drawn on what Tesco’s margin would be in the UK over the next year. “But in the same way that Clarke was held to account then, so his successor Dave Lewis must be now,” Ruddick says. Lewis’ “aspiration” was to keep trading profits at £1.4bn in 2015, the same as the year just gone, which Ruddick adds was “hardly the most confident of outlook statements”. However, he says this ambiguity was a deliberate part of Lewis’ plan to stop Tesco being “slavishly driven” to hit financial targets, which is made sense given that the focus on profit margins came at the cost of the customers.

Lee Boyce asks in The Daily Mail if Tesco is the next Woolworths: “jack of all trades and master of none”. He notes that Woolies was also once a British staple, which at one point seemed would never disappear. “It had become a bric-a-brac shop. If it was a family member, it was the nutty uncle you didn’t really want to visit anymore,” he adds. “Shoppers didn’t go inside for anything specific (other than pic ‘n’ mix), and this is a road Tesco is in danger of veering down.”

Tesco rival Sainsbury’s also made the news as it followed the other big three in finally announcing big job cuts are it tried to improve service on the shop floor and trim costs. It is planning to chop 800 jobs at its battles falling sales and profits and The Telegraph said it was the latest sign of the turmoil facing Britain’s big four.

It is workers who replenish shelves into the small hours who will be hit hardest as the supermarket shakes up its shop-floor operations (The Times £). In a similar tone to The Telegraph, the paper says it is the latest indication of the financial toll being exacted on food retailers by a grocery price war.

A leading British vineyard has warned sparkling English wine is at risk of losing its fizz (The Times £). Chapel Down CEO Frazer Thompson said the industry faced a nasty hangover as a result of the big increase in the number of English vineyards now making sparkling wine. He added competition was becoming “intensive” and he predicted it would inevitably lead to industry consolidation within the next three or four years.

Independent craft beer maker Brew Dog has given the City the finger by launching a £25m equity fundraising – Britain’s biggest-ever crowdfunding project – on its website. It has deliberately avoided traditional means of raising capital as it claims financial institutions have ruined British beer. Brew Dog plans to use the money to increase capacity at its Scottish brewery and expand overseas. Founder James Watt said: “We are not the Rockefellers. We are Guy Fawkes. This is about changing small business finance for ever. By making profit king, the financial institutions of the City gave rise to the bastardisation and commoditisation of beer.” (The Guardian)

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