UK stores
As the UK's biggest supermarket, Tesco is struggling to find new avenues for growth on home turf. Shoppers are no longer keen on the large hypermarkets that Tesco has done so much to develop, so it was forced to write off £804m of property assets and admit that nearly half of its long-famed pipeline of development land was now surplus to requirements. Profits slid 8.3% in the UK last year as Tesco focused on opening its local convenience stores and tried to tempt shoppers back to its biggest outlets with price cuts and investment in warmer, brighter interiors. This year it plans up to 160 new convenience stores and will continue to revamp bigger stores after years of under-investment, partly with the help of eateries such as recent acquisition Giraffe and coffee chain Harris + Hoole.