British Home Stores closed all 167 of its UK branches in 2016 two years later, House of Fraser, founded in 1849, went into administration. The closure in Sheffield is part of a story playing out across the world: the extinction of the archetypal department store, and a wider crisis for town and city centres. Get the Guardian’s award-winning long reads sent direct to you every Saturday morning It’s just always been there.” Other people mentioned the excellent customer service, fondly loved rituals like Christmas shopping and the January sales, and the modest pleasures of visiting an old-fashioned retailer, where “you could see what stuff was, and find out what was what”. “It’s as bad as a death in the family,” one passerby told me. No one needed any persuasion to talk about the closure. Every ground-floor window was covered by pastel-coloured posters advertising John Lewis’s “virtual events” and click-and-collect services. When I visited two months later, the building was shuttered and silent. By September, after three months of work, the store’s five floors were empty, and a story that had run for 58 years apparently reached its end. T-shirts were handed out, reading: “John Lewis Sheffield: Sept 1963-June 2021”.
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If it’s any consolation (and I hope it isn’t), the flagship store at Oxford Circus is just as bad.In the store’s restaurant, a signwriter had painted: “We no longer have our store but we will always have the memories.” The surrounding wall was soon full of photographs arranged in the shape of a heart, and expressions of gratitude and sadness: “I walked in these doors on my first day, turned round, had been here 23 years” “For 19 years I’ve been here looking after you and you looked after me – that’s what families do”. It’s astonishing that JL gets everything so amazingly right when it comes to customer service but scrimps on The Place To Eat. The sandwiches are passable – but of limited variety and very expensive. The coffee is made by machine and tastes of nothing. We came here quite regularly after visiting my parents-in-law and to be honest it was hard to decide what part of the trip was more disappointing. at £39/head, the only other vaguely acceptable option in the town centre is probably John Lewis (aka Heelas), where the limited and unimaginative offering is also indicative of ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ clearly being ignored. Reading is not a town renowned for its culinary excellence the fact that Starbucks hits the Tripadvisor ‘highest rated’ café list at no.22 says it all.Īdmittedly, there is l’Ortolan (Reading’s only Michelin starred restaurant) – but, if you don’t want the 5 Course lunch. Restaurants with Outdoor Seating in Reading.
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