People barely realize what Tesco really stands for

Most of the UK would recognize the Tesco brand at first sight – but fans of the leading supermarket are barely discovering the meaning behind its popular name.

One of the UK’s biggest supermarket brands, millions of people shop in Tesco stores every day. We are all so used to seeing the big logo in our villages, towns and cities, with those big red letters and blue underlining, that few of us have thought about where the title actually comes from.

It turns out that the origin of the supermarket’s title goes back over a century to the man who set up the first store, the Mirror reports. Tesco was founded in 1919 by a man named Jack Cohen, who was the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland.

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To get the first day’s stock for the stall, he used demobilization money from the Royal Flying Corp, which he was a part of during the First World War. The name Tesco first appeared as a result of Cohen buying a shipment of tea in 1923 from a man named Thomas Edward Stockwell.

In a nod to his suppliers, the founder combined “TES” with the first two letters of his name, culminating in the name we all recognize today – Tesco. Its first store opened in Edgware, North London in 1929 and within just a decade it was the proud owner of a hundred stores, cementing the Tesco name on the map.

The first large-scale iteration of Tesco wasn’t far behind, launching in Essex in 1958. Initially, Cohen was somewhat skeptical of the supermarket retail model.

However, he soon came around to the concept, understanding the need to buy and sell in bulk. The evolution of the brand from humble corner shop to nationwide supermarket chain is summarized by the Tesco website: “The new format store included a counter service selling cheese, butter and meat weighed by sales assistants.”

Despite Cohen’s passing in 1979, his important legacy lives on, with Tesco ubiquitous in many UK cities, with a total of over 4,000 branches.

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