It is expected that the café bar trade will soon come in for more criticism over the rising number of coffee shops in provincial high streets.

There are already regular reports within the industry’s trade news magazine of debates in local authority meetings, in which councilors regularly complain that their high streets are becoming crammed with coffee shops, to the detriment of an evenly mixed retail environment.  The councils also regularly allege that major chain cafés disregard local planning regulations, and open up in provincial high streets without permission.

The trade now waits to see what will happen in the Mary Portas project, in which the retail consultant, billed as the ‘queen of shops’, will report to the prime minister on what government, local authorities and businesses can do to promote the development of more prosperous and diverse high streets. It is said that she wishes to halt the ‘clone town’ phenomenon, in which all high streets are filled with the same chain names.

That question of diversity comes up in the new study of 75,000 retail sites by the Simply Business insurance company.  These figures suggest that coffee shops make up 11 per cent of high street businesses, up one per cent from last year. The highest proportion of coffee shops is in Wales and the South West, and the North East, at 12 per cent.

(By contrast, sandwich bars and fast-food takeaways have fallen one per cent each to three and two per cent; other takeaways are up to five per cent and surprisingly, pubs have increased to eleven per cent… probably not because any new ones have built, but because the other business around them have fallen away.)

In yet another study, to be released in late June, the world’s third-largest commercial estate company, Colliers, will say that over a third of high streets in the UK are either ‘degenerating’ or ‘failing’, largely because retailers ‘migrate’ to the best-performing areas, creating voids in high streets, which then ‘become dominated by pound stores and fast food chains’ – again, not because new ones are opening, but because everyone else in the area has left.

[!] Report this post

Processing your request, Please wait....

Report as:	Invalid Contents Other
Write in Words: (Optional)