MARKS & Spencer is eyeing more than 500 potential locations for new food stores across the UK.
The high street chain, which currently has around 330 shops, has drawn up a sweeping list of towns, cities and suburbs where it hopes to open fresh M&S Food halls in the coming years.
The dramatic growth plan comes as the retailer battles back from a crippling cyberattack that wiped £324 million off profits in the first half of the year, sending pre-tax earnings tumbling 99 per cent to just £3.4 million.
Bosses say the food division has “largely recovered” and is now powering ahead with three years of consecutive months of volume growth.
The expansion is aimed at cementing M&S as a major player in the grocery sector, with ambitions to reach 180 mixed stores and 420 food-only outlets.
The internal property brochure shows the sheer scale of the project, with 200 target locations in London alone, including Brixton, Sidcup, Clapham South, Finsbury Park and Shepherd’s Bush.
In Zones 2 and 3, the retailer is hunting for sites sized between 10,000 and 18,000 sq ft, preferably in prominent positions with access to parking and busy transport links.
Further out in Zones 4 and beyond, M&S is chasing much larger footprints, 18,000 sq ft and up, with 100 parking spaces and easy access from major roads.
The retailer wants every new store to be large enough to offer the full M&S Food range, complete with wider aisles, room for bigger trolleys and expanded car parks for family shoppers.
More than half of its entire estate is already scheduled for refurbishment by April 2028.
Across the rest of the UK, M&S is scouting for plots of 21,500 sq ft and above in highly visible roadside locations with 150 parking spaces, often on two-acre sites at the edge of towns.
Eight brand-new food-only shops are due to open before the end of the year, with more than 20 in total being opened or modernised by the end of the financial year.
Alex Freudmann, managing director of M&S Food, said the chain was moving “faster”, with locations under consideration stretching from Elgin in Scotland to Exmouth in Devon.
Chief executive Stuart Machin has previously said he wants to make M&S a “full shopping-list retailer”, but admitted its current grocery market share of 4 per cent remained “piddly”.
He said more than 50 new food stores were already in the approved pipeline.
The brand is also pushing to grow its London convenience network, seeking smaller 6,000 sq ft sites in commuter hotspots and office districts.
Outside the capital, the new-store wishlist stretches across almost every corner of Britain, from Scarborough and Lancaster to St Andrews, Falmouth, Cwmbran, Abergavenny, Truro, Wokingham, Abergele, Crawley, Chippenham and Chelmsford.
Agents who introduce previously unknown sites are even being offered a finder’s fee.
The expansion comes after the retailer experimented with a fashion-only shop in Battersea Power Station, though Machin has since ruled out broadening that format, describing the trial response as only “OK”.
The cyberattack earlier this year knocked out logistics operations for six weeks, leaving shelves bare and causing fashion sales to plunge by 16.4 per cent, with online sales down a staggering 42.9 per cent.
But bosses insist the business is regaining momentum and this nationwide store grab shows no signs of slowing.
