In 1875 J H Mills in Bristol opened a small family grocery store, and in 1900 became a limited company with 12 shops. J H Mills Ltd. turned into Gateway, in 1950, when a major finance house became the major shareholder. The J H Mills shops were then converted to become self-service type supermarkets. Throughout the late 20th century the amount of stores increased dramatically with takeovers and different acquisitions across the country. In 1996 Gateway food markets turned into Somerfield and was floated on the stock exchange and became a plc.

The Somerfield group is made up of four separate businesses, which together operate over 1400 stores nationwide in the UK. Firstly, the Somerfield Stores division consists of around 1,000 stores incorporating Somerfield Stores and approximately 450 Kwik Save Stores. Somerfield is a modern high street retailer offering fresh foods, groceries, and househol

 the Somerfield business will focus on local and convenience shopping in small and medium sized stores

The last of the businesses is Somerfield 24-7, a new, recent venture that allows people to shop for groceries without going into any of the supermarkets, by using the phone, Internet or interactive television and getting the goods delivered to their door.

A preferred outcome for the employees would be not to sell any of the stores and to leave the strategy as it is. However, the current strategy is not working, forcing the board members to implicate a new one involving undoubtable job losses by selling the larger Somerfield stores and the Kwik Save division. All that we can hope for is that the company finds a buyer for the properties as soon as possible to minimise job losses. The employees who are unfortunate enough to lose their jobs need suitable redundancy packages, which should reflect on their position and dependance upon Somerfield. If the company are opting to target custom through new technologies including the Internet, interactive TV etc. then retraining to deal with distribution through this method to local communities could be a solution to cut redundancies.

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Approximate Word count = 1563
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)