WHSmith convenience store at Clacket Lane Eastbound, located near the phone store & arcade and opposite the seating area for the food outlets. Very large WHSmith store at Clacket Lane East, offering customers a range of travel essentials, books and snacks. Prices are inflated quite a bit here compared to a bog-standard high st branch of WHSmith, putting some customers off & creating more trade for SPAR, the other convenience store at Clacket Lane East. Meal deals cost around £6-7 here, so definitely give that a miss. WHSmith also change their product range slightly on the motorway. High street stores have a much stronger focus on stationery & books. Motorway stores are more like food stores. WHSmith at airports is similar. The large size of the store means its product range doesn’t “spill out” onto the concourse. This is common with WHSmith at other services. Clacket Lane East would’ve opened with an unbranded convenience store in 1993. In 2001/2, this would’ve been rebranded with their own brand name “reStore”, before becoming WHSmith in 2009. The location hasn’t changed. WHSmith provides lots of facilities at the site itself, including Costa Express, Krispy Kreme cabinets and Skwishee Iced drinks. WHSmith was fully refurbished last year in March 2023, with a more organised style & fresh look. Because WHSmith has become such a common brand to find at motorway services (all 3 major operators have it at over 90% of their respective sites), operators tend not to promote them much and don’t value them as a unique brand. Instead, they are treated like an essential facility, such as a Changing Places. WHSmith remains open 24 hours, allowing customers calling during uncivilised hours of the day to access some facilities. This pic also shows some original 1993 floor tillage on the concourse & a large skylight above WHSmith, flooding the amenity building with natural lighting, which makes the place feel more rural and larger. WHSmith was oddly rather quiet during my visit. I visited during the Easter holidays and the site was very busy, so surprising to see only a limited amount of customers using this store. Could be due to the price inflation. WHSmith isn’t signposted from the M25 Eastbound, instead SPAR is, as it’s a unique shop brand to Roadchef. WHSmith isn’t advertised much around the site, meaning customers are not made aware of the facility, possibly impacting its level of custom.

Photo taken on 05/04/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Clacket Lane, M25, WHSmith, Roadchef