Tesco launches Decks carvery restaurant

Tesco is trialling the roll out of an own-brand family carvery restaurant as it continues its strategy of revitalising its stores into family shopping and leisure destinations.

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The first Decks will open inside Tesco’s Coventry Arena store.

Decks is being positioned as a restaurant that serves “real, honest, fresh” food at value prices. The “decks” on offer include breakfast, roast and pastry.

The first outlet of its kind, inside a Tesco Extra store in Coventry, is offering a chicken, beef, pork or gammon carvery for £5.50. Also on the menu is salads, cakes, children’s food, sandwiches and alcohol.

Like other carvery restaurants, such as Toby and Harvester, the meat will be served by Decks’ “expertly trained kitchen team”, while customers will help themselves to vegetables and salads.

The Decks restaurant is 100 per cent owned by a new company called Tesco Family Dining Limited, which was incorporated with Companies House in May this year. According to the filing, its directors are Tesco Group company secretary Jonathan Lloyd, commercial director and CEO of foodservice propositions and “Project Starch” Michael Holmes and corporate finance and treasury director Scilla Grimble.

A Tesco spokeswoman says: “Decks offers customers fresh food at excellent prices, with lots of great healthy options available. It’s a new food concept that we’re trialling in our Coventry Arena store and we look forward to seeing what customers think.”

The launch of Decks follows the £48.6m acquisition of the Giraffe restaurant chain earlier this year as part of Tesco chief executive Philip Clarke’s bid to make stores “warmer and less clinical”. 

The supermarket has also recently acquired a 49 per cent stake in coffee house Harris+Hoole and invested an undisclosed amount in bakery chain Euphorium as it looks to leisure businesses to provide additional revenue streams in a bid to turnaround flagging sales

Earlier this month Tesco launched a major marketing push to improve the perception of the quality of its food offering, with ads highlighting the provenance of its fresh produce and encouraging customers to “celebrate everyday food”. 

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