A weather team at Tesco

Surprisingly, Tesco has its own weather team:

After three years of research, the six-person team has created its own software that calculates how shopping patterns change “for every degree of temperature and every hour of sunshine,” Tesco said last month.

... “Rapidly changing weather can be a real challenge,” Jonathan Church, a Tesco spokesman, said in a statement. “The system successfully predicted temperature drops during July that led to a major increase in demand for soup, winter vegetables and cold-weather puddings.”

This type of economy of scale just doesn't figure into the thinking of the average high street operator but when you are the size of Tesco, with a turnover of over £1bn a week, the smallest improvement can be produce a big impact on the bottom line.

PS - For my money, Sainsbury's beats Tesco hands down.