Sainsbury's, Victoria, London

This is a great sized Sainsburys in Pimlico, 5 minutes from Victoria, 5 minutes from Pimlico tube.

Has fresh seafood, cheese, bakery, deli, and a good choice of homewares, but not so big that you can’t find your way around the supermarket.

We happily shopped here for years

A great selection of stuff - I couldn’t believe the 'market’ concept when I first went in there…

But I find it really hard to navigate the store - for example fresh bread and sliced bread are on completely different aisles and stock cubes are near the freezer section…what’s that about??

The entrance is really crowded as well - I think the whole place needs a re-jig and it would litterally be the perfect supermarket - the fish counter has an amazing range as well.

This store is the one Sainsbury’s uses to set the low bar for benchmarking store layout for every other shop in the chain. Sadly this means that it takes the accolade for being the worst laid out retail space anywhere in the country. I’ve only had the displeasure of using it for 3 months, but I am convinced it has reliably been collecting this accolade for at least the past 3 years.

How can a store layout be done so so badly? The key concept is based around the 80-20 rule, which this store seems to follow meticulously. Namely, place 80% of a certain food category in a place one would normally expect to find it. But then place the other 20% somewhere completely unpredictable. Shoppers then spend the majority of their time milling around the store in a vain effort to locate an item which has actually been placed on some shelf largely at random.

Let’s take a few examples. Salad vegetables are near the other vegetables. Except tomatoes. These are a good 20m walk and are between the apples and the bananas.

Meat is generally near the front of the store. Except sausages. These are next to the milk about half way in.

Cheese is a coin tossing exercise. Depending on the day of the week, it’s either right at the front, or next to the milk.

My suggestion is to use the Tesco on Warwick Way. It’s much smaller, but at least things there make sense