Wed 16th Apr 2014 - Breaking News - Tesco – we will open 100 Giraffe, Decks and Harris + Hoole outlets next year Tesco – we will open 100 Giraffe, Decks and Harris + Hoole outlets next year: Supermarket chain Tesco is to accelerate the provision of food and beverage offers in the coming year with more than 100 Giraffe, Decks and Harris + Hoole openings planned. The company, which reported UK sales down 0.1% to just over £48bn in its full-year, is expanding its casual dining offer, overseen by former Mitchells & Butlers chief executive Adam Fowle, as part of a push to enhance the attractiveness of its stores. The company stated: “We have been testing the ingredients for our large destination stores. We introduced our ‘Next Generation’ F&F departments to 104 of our stores this year, with around 140 planned for the year ahead. We will also expand our casual dining offer by opening over 100 Giraffe, Decks and Harris+Hoole outlets next year. As well as remodelling our stores, we have also trialed an overall reduction of our selling space in two Extra stores this year. We repurposed a total of 41,000 square feet across both stores and introduced new tenants. In Newport, we reallocated general merchandise space, introducing discount-department store ‘Original Factory Shop’ and children’s soft-play centre ‘Funky Monkeys’. At Stockton, we introduced an ‘Xercise4Less’ gym on the mezzanine, and a ‘Funky Monkeys’. We are pleased with these two stores and plan to complete another five similar projects within our Extra format in 2014/15. We have also trialed a grocery home shopping hub concept in Mansfield Extra, using the capacity of one of our larger stores to fulfil a greater proportion of grocery home shopping orders, including picking some lines directly from our store warehouse. We have plans for a further three similar trials in 2014/15. We opened 128 Express stores this year and refreshed almost 200, as we work towards being the best, most relevant convenience retailer in town. We plan to open a further 150 Express stores next year and refresh another 450.Whilst our performance in the UK was held back by the difficult and more competitive trading environment, our work to ‘Build a Better Tesco’ has strengthened the foundations of the business. There is much more to do and we are accelerating our investment to deliver the most compelling offer for customers. Our transformation work within general merchandise weighed on our like-for-like sales performance across the year as we continue to move away from low margin products such as consumer electronics and migrate to more profitable categories. Our new Spring/Summer general merchandise ranges, anchored around Home, Cook & Dine, Stationery and Party, started to arrive in-store in March.” Chief executive Philip Clarke said: “We are transforming Tesco through a relentless focus on providing the most compelling offer for our customers. Our results today reflect the challenges we face in a trading environment which is changing more rapidly than ever before. We are determined to lead the industry in this period of change. Having strengthened the foundations of our business in the UK, we are now accelerating our growth in new channels and investing in sharper prices, improved quality, stronger ranges and better service.”