Yates’s Wines Lodges is looking for sites in key locations across the North for its new secondary retail brand, The Blob Shop.
In the first of a series of new acquisitions Yates’s has acquired premises in Dalton Square, Lancaster, which will be open before Christmas. It is also converting an existing wine lodge in Grosvenor Way, Blackburn, Lancashire. Blob Shops are already trading in Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool.
According to the company, the Blob Shops “take their unusual name from the nickname customers fondly gave to the Wine Lodges in the past and to their favourite fortified toddy, The Blob.”
Steve Burbidge, Yates’s retail director, said a nationwide chain of Blob Shops to rival the wine lodges was not on the agenda. He was confident that Blob Shops will be warmly received “wherever we can acquire suitable premises for conversion,” he said.
Yates’s plans to open 12 new wine lodges this year and 15 in 1997 to add to its current 57 units. Most of the planned acquisitions are in the London suburbs, the Midlands and the M4 corridor.
