page_title: Mac Fisheries
section_title: Challenge and development
hierarchical_section_title: Mac Fisheries / Retail chain / Challenge and development
caption_attribution_description: English: Shopping parade, Brighton Road, Coulsdon, Surrey Shopping parades change rapidly, and some of the shops here in 1968 have vanished not just locally but nationally - Mac Fisheries being an example. The National Provincial Bank merged with the Westminster Bank to become Natwest - and the branch seen here at the end is now an insurance office. Sainsbury's have gone from here also. The RT bus seen is in green London Country livery on Route 414, a very long one from Horsham to West Croydon via Dorking, Reigate and Redhill.
context_page_description: Mac Fisheries was a branded United Kingdom retail chain of fishmongers, founded by William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, the co-founder with his brother of Lever Brothers, which later merged to become Unilever.
context_section_description: Food rationing in the UK finally ended in 1954, and together with the wider introduction of American-developed frozen products such as Unilever's own Birds Eye fish fingers, meant a decline in wet-fish sales, and a decline for Mac Fisheries. The management turned the chain towards multi-line retailing, introducing fresh vegetables, dairy products and some canned produce. But now shop size proved a problem, as the originally purchased retail estate from 1920 had not been expanded.
  This resulted in the chain moving to larger scale shops in the late 1950s, often on different streets or different parts of the town. But the new multi-line stores proved successful in reviving the chain's fortune, and spurred the growth of the chain into the new concept of supermarket based retail. To expand its footprint Mac Fisheries sought a merger, and found a willing seller in Express Dairies, which wished to dispose of its chain Premier Supermarkets. Express had seen the problem of being both a wholesale supplier to supermarkets such as Fine Fare, Gateway, Sainsbury's and Tesco, as well as a retail competitor in Premier: the same problem that would eventually lead to Mac Fisheries' disposal and closure some 15 years later. Express also needed the cash to develop long-life milk, which the funds from the sale of Premier would allow it to launch.
caption: Shops in Brighton Road, Coulsdon, Surrey, 1968; some of the shops here in 1968 have vanished not just locally but nationally – including Mac Fisheries.
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