Shop'n Drive

There has been a Shop'n Drive on the outskirts of York for a while - the garage shop next to a Total garage. Some work was being done on our local garage - the fascias had been removed - and I thought briefly at the time "Oh no, not a Shop'n Drive". Sure enough, that is what emerged.

Given that there are at least two Shop'n Drive stores, it seems fair enough to conclude that this is something of a chain, and not a single shop. I do not feel it is fair to poke too much fun at individual shops, since they might have had a sign produced - "Robs Rolls", for example - and only afterwards realised the mistake. There might have been an argument with the signwriter over who should have checked the grammar. Money might have been mentioned, and at that time the shop owner decided not to bother, and just live with it.

But Shop'n Drive, really. It should say Shop 'n' Drive, of course, unless they are going for some obscure pun based on Chopin Drive that I have completely missed.

I found out more about the design of the shops from this article in The Grocer magazine, which helpfully confuses things further by calling the shops Shop N'Drive. Presumably they thought it was some sort of pun involving Sunderland footballer Alfred N'Diaye.

The shops are owned by Gerald Ronson, who was one of the "Guinness Four" in the 1980s. I thought for one delicious moment it was Gerald Ratner, but sadly not.

The identity was designed by an agency called Pyott, which describes Ronson as a "forecourt retail legend". "Who single-handedly has been responsible for all of the developments in retail on our petrol forecourts for over the past 45 years." That is a complete sentence, so grammar is clearly not their strong point. They say the identity will "create a memorable and distinctive brand that will change people’s perceptions and present a modern, slick retail environment". I agree with most of that - it is memorable and distinctive and it has changed my perceptions of our local garage shop.

On the design itself, I know that these things are subjective, but it does remind me of something from the sixties, or possibly seventies. I think it just looks tacky, actually.