What's Inside Tesco Finest's Pop Up Wine Bar?

Tesco hopes to capture the flag of premium supermarket ranges by adding an element of immersive experience to its Finest brand.

To realise this tactic, the grocer has opened a pop-up wine bar in London’s Soho. The activation is one that consumers may not necessarily expect from Tesco: it features a minimalist, subtly branded interior, black chalkboards, trendy metal furniture and a bar stocked with 48 Finest wines.

The pop-up is open until 13 August. It’s the first time Tesco has embarked on such a long term (and ultimately expensive) sampling exercise, explained Nick Jackman, who heads up the Finest brand.

“For us, it’s up there as something that’s fresh, new and exciting,” he said. “We’re really keen to see how it goes over the two weeks, and if the level positivity that we’ve already got continues, then there’s no reason why we couldn’t continue to do this."

The experience is miles away from serving up plastic shot glasses of plonk in an out-of-town superstore. This is sampling to the extreme, inviting guests to stay for “one or two hours” to try new flights of wine that may normally be well out of their comfort range.

“What we know from our research is that customers generally have four or five wines within their personal repertoire that they like to stick to,” explained Jackman. “So what we're trying to do here is give customers the opportunity to come out of the supermarket aisle and really immerse themselves in the product, so they get to experience it, taste it and discover it, and therefore find something new.”

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