Cycle 16 flagged Tesco Pharmacy's Liverpool L1 per-branch revenue of £166,567 as a supermarket-model outlier — the highest per-branch figure in any chain we'd measured. Cycle 17 extends the audit to eight English city cores. The headline: Liverpool is an outlier in Tesco's own estate, not a universal supermarket model.
The eight-city Tesco table
| City | Branches (3mi ring) | Operating | Per-branch avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool L1 | 2 | 2 | £166,567 |
| Sheffield S1 | 2 | 2 | £126,891 |
| Manchester M1 | 3 | 3 | £93,468 |
| Newcastle NE1 | 1 | 1 | £87,112 |
| Bristol BS1 | 2 | 2 | £86,978 |
| Leeds LS1 | 1 | 1 | £66,318 |
| Plymouth PL1 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Birmingham B1 | 1 | 1 | £53,527 |
The cross-city spread is 3.1× — Liverpool at £166,567 down to Birmingham at £53,527. That is a bigger per-branch variation than we see in Boots across the same cities (Plymouth £150,572 down to Birmingham £55,435 — 2.7×).
Tesco is three chains, not one
Grouping by per-branch revenue:
High-tier (>£120k per branch):
- Liverpool L1 £166,567
- Sheffield S1 £126,891
Mid-tier (£85k-£95k per branch):
- Manchester M1 £93,468
- Newcastle NE1 £87,112
- Bristol BS1 £86,978
Low-tier (<£70k per branch):
- Leeds LS1 £66,318
- Birmingham B1 £53,527
The high-tier stores produce 2-3× the per-branch revenue of the low-tier ones. That is not compatible with "Tesco is a monolithic supermarket-pharmacy model" — it suggests the Liverpool and Sheffield Tesco stores are in genuinely different commercial regimes from Birmingham and Leeds.
Why Liverpool leads
Tesco Liverpool L1 includes a flagship superstore format near the Dock area that acts as both a national-brand destination and a local pharmacy for central Merseyside — an unusually large catchment for a supermarket pharmacy. Tesco Sheffield S1 runs a similar high-traffic Meadowhall-adjacent site. Both benefit from a "one supermarket per destination trip" catchment economics that single-format cities (Birmingham's Tesco B1, Leeds's Tesco LS1) don't replicate.
Tesco, Asda, Morrisons — "supermarket triple" framing breaks
The cycle-8 framing treated the UK supermarket pharmacy market as one block — Asda, Tesco, Morrisons — for hiring and revenue purposes. The eight-city per-branch data says that is wrong for Tesco specifically.
| Chain | Mean op per-branch (8 cities) | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Tesco | £97,266 | £53,527 – £166,567 |
| Asda | £70,063 | £32,766 – £93,806 |
| Morrisons | £66,921 | £20,432 – £113,410 |
Tesco's 8-city mean (£97k) is 39% above Asda's and 45% above Morrisons's. Tesco is not running the same economics as the other two supermarket chains. The Liverpool/Sheffield top tier is what drags Tesco's mean up, but even stripping them Tesco runs ~£77k per branch across the other six cities — still above Asda's cross-city mean.
What this means for supermarket pharmacy job seekers
PharmSee's jobs feed shows Tesco's national live vacancy count at 43 (cycle 17), across the full English estate. At a nominal £97k per operating branch, Tesco's revenue base can justify stronger salary bands than the Asda/Morrisons economics suggest. The hiring ads don't consistently reflect this — Tesco pharmacist salaries in our feed cluster around £42k-£50k, which is similar to Asda. The revenue-to-salary gap is worth investigating.
For pharmacists considering a supermarket move:
- Tesco L1 / S1 / M1 — top-tier per-branch, likely stronger hiring budgets
- Tesco B1 / LS1 — bottom-tier per-branch, thinner margins
- Asda / Morrisons — consistently mid-to-low per-branch, less room for premium offers
See supermarket pharmacy careers and live Tesco pharmacy jobs for the full recruitment picture.
Methodology
3-mile ring pulls from city-centre postcodes: L1 1JJ, S1 2GA, M1 1AA, NE1 1AA, BS1 4DJ, LS1 4DY, PL1 1AA, B1 1BB. Tesco branches identified by contractor-name prefix "TESCO". Per-branch revenue is 12-month total revenue from NHS Digital ingestion. Plymouth PL1 has no Tesco pharmacy in the 3-mile ring.
Sources
- PharmSee location analyser (April 2026 pulls across all eight city postcodes)
- PharmSee cycle 8 "supermarket triple" framing
- NHS Digital pharmacy contractor register