My Task – P1
Scenario –I Barry Andrews work as a junior journalist for the local newspaper which is planning to run a feature article on businesses.

Tesco:
Jack Cohen was reluctant to go back to tailoring after the First World War. This is when he started selling stuff on market stalls. In 1919, Jack Cohen started selling surplus groceries from a market stall in the east end of London. He then owned a number of stalls which at first were ran by his family but after time he gradually employed non-family members. By now he had also had a wholesale business. In 1924 Jack sold his own-brand product which was tea. This tea had come from a firm of tea suppliers of whom T.E Stockwell was a partner. Jack then came up with the name of Tesco by using the initials from T.E Stockwell and the first to letters of his surname. After a while the market trading business became difficult as partners became unreliable so he eventually turned to high street shops without doors.

The first two Tesco stores were opened in London in a large estate in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham. This area was called Becontree. The other was in Burnt Oak. These were opened in 1931. By 1939 Jack Cohen had opened up over 100 Tesco Stores. Tesco showed its expansionary zeal early on by buying up rival shops. In the 1950s the retailer bought 70 Williams stores and 200 Harrow stores, followed by 97 Charles Philips stores and the Victor Value chain in the early 1960s. In 1961 Tesco Leicester entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest store in Europe and in 1968 Tesco opened its first 'superstore' in Crawley, West Sussex. In 1974 Tesco opened its first petrol stations, and would become the UK's largest independent petrol retailer.

By 1979 total sales topped £1bn, and by 1982 sales had doubled to more than £2bn. In 1987 Tesco successfully completed a hostile takeover of supermarket rival