Cycle 14 flagged Tesco Liverpool L1 at £166,567 per operating branch as the highest per-branch supermarket pharmacy revenue in PharmSee's atlas. Cycle 16 extended the measurement to seven cities. Cycle 19 adds Nottingham, Leeds and Bristol and confirms the full-atlas spread at 3.1× from top to bottom.
The 9-city Tesco pharmacy table (cycle 19)
| City | Branches | Operating | Op avg | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool L1 | 2 | 2 | £166,567 | Tier 1 |
| Sheffield S1 | 2 | 2 | £126,891 | Tier 1 |
| Manchester M1 | 3 | 3 | £93,468 | Tier 2 |
| Newcastle NE1 | 1 | 1 | £87,112 | Tier 2 |
| Bristol BS1 | 2 | 2 | £86,978 | Tier 2 |
| Leeds LS1 | 1 | 1 | £66,318 | Tier 3 |
| Birmingham B1 | 1 | 1 | £53,527 | Tier 3 |
| Nottingham NG1 | 1 | 1 | £53,062 | Tier 3 |
| Plymouth PL1 | 0 | 0 | n/a | Zero |
Total: 13 operating Tesco pharmacies across the 9 audited English city cores. Full-atlas operating revenue: £1.24 million. Average: £95,392. Spread: £166,567 / £53,062 = 3.14×.
Tier 1 — £127k and up (Liverpool, Sheffield)
Tesco Liverpool L1 has two branches at £193,350 (FD864, L13 2BY) and £139,783 (FXN75, L8 4XF). These are both large-format neighbourhood Tesco pharmacies sitting 2+ miles from the city centre in high-density residential catchments. The Liverpool top-tier signature is suburban Tesco Extras with large pharmacy counters.
Tesco Sheffield S1 has two branches at £152,793 (FC500, S6 3BU) and £100,990 (FM245, S7 2QB). Same signature — suburban Sheffield Tesco superstores, both outside the city-centre ring, both at £100k+ per branch.
The Tier 1 signature is large-format suburban Tesco in high-density northern cities. The two cities that hit this tier also happen to share the "Boots retreated" ghost profile from the cycle 19 bimodality piece — Liverpool 50% Boots ghost, Sheffield 11% (but Boots operating-revenue strong). Tesco's Tier 1 doesn't correlate with Boots ghost rate.
Tier 2 — £85k to £100k (Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol)
Tesco Manchester runs 3 operating branches: FQ258 (M18 8LD) at £133,592, FWV01 (M6 5JG) at £80,959, FWN72 (M8 5DP) at £65,853. The Manchester Tesco estate is more dispersed than Liverpool's — three branches covering three different GM quadrants.
Tesco Newcastle is a single-branch city: FD563 (NE8 1AG) at £87,112, in Gateshead on the Tyne south bank. Tesco Bristol runs two branches both in BS4/BS5 suburbs at £109,325 and £64,632 — the average of £86,978 matches the Newcastle single-site.
The Tier 2 signature is mid-sized suburban Tesco with a single dominant branch.
Tier 3 — £53k to £67k (Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham)
The three lowest per-branch Tesco averages all cluster in the £53–66k band — about a third of Liverpool's top-tier Tesco. Leeds (LS8 4BU, £66,318), Birmingham (B18 7NZ, £53,527) and Nottingham (NG9 2WJ, £53,062) are all single-branch cities with the one Tesco pharmacy sitting in an outlying postcode.
The Nottingham NG9 2WJ Tesco sits in Beeston, 3 miles south-west of the city centre — outside the NG1 5DT ring PharmSee used for the city-core audit but just inside the 3-mile catchment. It's a Tesco Extra serving the University of Nottingham dormitory cluster, which would explain the lower dispensing load per branch.
Plymouth has zero Tesco pharmacies
The cycle 19 headline discovery: Plymouth PL1 1AA 3-mile ring contains zero Tesco pharmacy contractor codes. Plymouth has Boots (64.7% of local vacancies per cycle 16), Morrisons, Asda, Rowlands, Day Lewis, Well — but no Tesco pharmacy.
There are 7 Tesco Extras in the PL1 catchment per Tesco's own store finder (not in PharmSee's data), but none of them host pharmacy counters. This is the only English city core of the 9 audited without a single Tesco pharmacy. Plymouth is the city where Boots fills the entire supermarket-pharmacy competitive space.
The 3.1× spread versus Boots's 2.7× spread
For reference, Boots's operating-average spread across the same 9 cities runs from Plymouth £150,572 (tier 1) to Birmingham £55,435 (tier 3) — a 2.7× ratio. Tesco's 3.1× Tesco spread is tighter at the top but wider at the bottom.
The difference: Tesco is a single-tier-per-city operator. Each city gets one (or two) Tesco pharmacies, and the per-branch revenue is determined mostly by the suburban postcode they land in. Boots has 8+ branches per city and spreads across tiers within a city. Boots's spread is driven by within-city branch heterogeneity; Tesco's spread is driven by between-city postcode selection.
This is why an investor looking at "UK supermarket pharmacy economics" gets three completely different answers depending on which cities are in the sample. Liverpool + Sheffield gives you £146k per branch. Leeds + Birmingham + Nottingham gives you £57k per branch.
The commercial takeaway
- Tesco per-branch economics are postcode-specific, not regional. Liverpool L13 at £193,350 is 3.6× the Nottingham NG9 branch at £53,062. Both are suburban Tesco Extras. The difference is catchment density.
- Plymouth's zero-Tesco slot is the cleanest supermarket-pharmacy whitespace in the atlas. If Tesco wanted a southern Boots-adjacent counter-position, PL1 is the one city where they have no presence at all.
- The Tier 1 cities (Liverpool, Sheffield) host 4 of the 13 operating branches (31%) but 36% of the total revenue. Tesco's Northern suburban format accounts for an outsized share of the commercial tail.
Explore the data
- Supermarket pharmacy job search — Tesco pharmacy jobs nationwide
- Tesco L1 £166k per-branch analysis
- Supermarket pharmacy careers piece
- PharmSee location analyzer
Methodology
Nine-city Tesco pharmacy audit, cycle 19. 3-mile /api/location/analyze rings at each city-core postcode (L1 1JJ, B1 1BB, M1 1AA, S1 2GA, NE1 7RU, PL1 1AA, LS1 4DT, BS1 1BB, NG1 5DT). Tesco contractor codes identified by "TESCO" in contractor name. Operating status cycle 14 convention. Revenue is NHSBSA dispensing items × £1.29 + services, 12-month window. The "zero Tesco" finding for Plymouth is a negative result at the 3-mile ring boundary only — Tesco Extras outside the ring are not in this count.