March of the middle-class food stores

Food-obsessed Londoners were salivating with glee today as two of Britain's most upmarket food chains revealed major expansion plans in the capital.

Waitrose said it plans to open four new London superstores in time for Christmas and Daylesford Organic is launching a major new store and café in Notting Hill.

The home-cooking revolution sweeping through London has seen hundreds of specialist food shops open in recent years as shoppers have been influenced by celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson and have rediscovered a love of good British ingredients.

The new Waitrose stores are in Chiswick, Islington, Clapham and Edgware Road and will replace branches of Woolworths.

Waitrose, last night named as "best high street retailer" by Which? magazine, believes that the strong trend towards cooking more meals at home means that there is huge scope for expansion in the capital.

It is running neck and neck with Asda with about a 10 per cent share of the grocery market in London but believes it can leap ahead and start to close in on Sainsbury's in second place.

Waitrose managing director Mark Price said: "These acquisitions will allow us to reach up to 200,000 new shoppers in the capital and will support our ambitious growth plans.

"We are delighted to add these prime locations to our portfolio of shops, particularly as they are sited in our heartland areas where Londoners have been requesting Waitrose branches for many years.

"These shops will consolidate our position in London, bringing the total number of branches in the region to 44." In October Waitrose is also opening a major store at the new Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush.

Waitrose added that sales have held up well and are around 7 per cent ahead of last year.

The Evening Standard can also reveal that Daylesford Organic, founded as a farm shop in Gloucestershire by Carole Bamford in 2003, plans to open a store in Notting Hill in the autumn.

It has taken over a row of three properties on Westbourne Grove and is spending an estimated £5 million on converting them and plans to be open by Christmas.

The store will be its second major outlet in London after the branch it opened in Pimlico last April.

However, the Notting Hill branch has been planned on a much more ambitious scale - appropriately so since shoppers at the original farm shop in the Cotswolds have been lampooned as living in "Notting Hill en Campagne".

The new store will occupy premises vacated by another organic food store, Fresh & Wild, which closed last April as a prelude to its American owner - Whole Foods Market - opening Britain's first organic superstore in Kensington High Street.

Plans seen by the Standard reveal that the new store will be on three levels with two-thirds of the floor space given to shopping and a third to a 99-seater café, including pavement tables. It will have a drinks licence and plans to be open from breakfast to late evening.

The split level ground floor will have the main "food hall" selling groceries, meat, fruit and vegetables, freshly baked bread, wine, and upmarket home wear. There will also be an organic health and beauty range as well as the café. In the basement there will be a "raw bar" selling fresh salads, fruit juices, and light raw vegetables to be eaten at three long dining tables.

Daylesford, which sources most of its food from the family's organic farm estates in Gloucestershire and Staffordshire, refused to comment on these plans since they are still at an early stage. However, sources close to the business said it was scheduled to open towards the end of the year.

The refurbishment is still at an early stage and the project does not yet have full planning permission.

Former BOAC air hostess Lady Bamford, the 62-year-old wife of JCB heir Sir Anthony Bamford, persuaded her husband to convert all the family's farms to organic after she visited the organic tent at the 1978 Royal Show.

As well as the 1500-acre Daylesford Estate and a a 3000-acre farm in Wooton Staffordshire, the family own a £25 million home in Chelsea and estates in the Caribbean and Provence.

Latest accounts reveal that the company made a £3.48 million loss in 2006 on turnover of £3.62 million. So far the company has built up losses of almost £9.5 million, largely because of the start-up cost of new shops.