LONDON, (Reuters) -You're rushing to shop and prepare for a party. You've no cash, a splitting headache and a baby screaming on the back seat. But your dry cleaning's waiting at one end of the street, the grocery store's at the other and the creche and the pharmacy are miles away. Oh, and the cash machine's empty... If that's an all-too-common reality for you in 1998, by the start of the next millennium all those headaches -- both literal and figurative -- might be solved at a stroke with a trip to your local supermarket. Britain's supermarkets are rapidly changing their style and widening their role to become one-stop shops supplying not just food but medicines, dry cleaning and banking. They are experimenting with 24-hour opening and home shopping as well as services allowing you to order goods ready to collect at the store, all in an effort to make the drudgery of getting the weekly groceries more bearable.

"Our ultimate aim is for every individual customer to have an individual experience when they shop,'' Ian O'Reilly, information technology (IT) director at Britain's leading supermarket chain Tesco, told Reuters. ONE-STOP SHOPPING The supermarkets of the future are likely to have much larger ranges of goods and services than now, as they strive to cater for differing tastes and give customers the opportunity to do all their shopping under one roof.

"I think there'll be more services like crhches...more pharmacies, more services in store such as renting videos, banking...a one-stop family experience,'' according to Brian Keating, director of IT development at Safeway, another of Britain's big four supermarket chains. Supermarkets already stock videos, music, newspapers, clothing and over-the-counter medicines as well as food. They are branching out into areas such as in-store pharmacies, dry cleaners and banking in the quest to keep customers satisfied.

CUTTING DOWN THE QUEUES Developments in technology are intended to make shopping easier and quicker, cutting down queues at checkouts. Both Safeway and J. Sainsbury are testing hand-held scanners which customers can use to add up their own bill as they shop, helping to cut down waiting time at the checkout. Silicon chips which can be implanted in items and read automatically by electronic eyes as shopping is dropped into a basket or trolley are currently too expensive to be widely used but in five or 10 years' time should be cheap enough for most goods, O'Reilly said. Scanners in Safeway can already give shoppers a list of items bought regularly and outline special offers which might be of interest, using the database built up through its loyalty card scheme, which mirrors those of Tesco and Sainsbury. SHOPPING FROM HOME In future, shoppers could use such lists to order over the telephone items to collect from the store, or take delivery at home. Ordering can already be done by fax, telephone or at some Tesco stores through its Internet website and the chains expect further avenues to be added as digital technology opens up television shopping possibilities. O'Reilly reckoned that home shopping could grow to account for around 15-20 percent of customers, some of whom will use it for all their purchases and others who will just do their basic shopping this way. So stores are going to continue to be important, although their layout may change radically. THEME SHOPPING "Grocery stores at the moment are geared in a certain way because of all the basic products we have to buy. But if we can do that in a different way, then what you'll have is themed areas, meal solutions, a different grouping,'' Keating said. He envisages a supermarket where shoppers can head to, say, the Indian meals section and buy in the one zone everything they would need, from basics like rice through to spices and sauces. "The concept is to focus more on the activities that people are undertaking...I think you will see the physical layout change in response to better data on individual customer behaviour,'' Sainsbury's IT director Chris Montagnon said. Shoppers who choose to visit the supermarket rather than ordering from home could also find exteriors increasingly innovative. INNOVATIONS INSIDE AND OUT Sainsbury has a store in the port of Plymouth in western England with a roof resembling a line of white sails and a steel-and-glass store in London's trendy Camden. Tesco has won an architectural award for its Sheffield store in northern England. The companies see fresh building design of their buildings as a way of further enhancing their brand image. Back inside the stores, companies are experimenting with using three dimensional symbols to direct customers instead of the traditional written signs. Tesco's Sheffield store uses penguin figures to show the way to UK markets counter. What future shopper will be able to resist such in-store creativity? customers of Lindo's Family Foods Cashier Crystal Wales is an expert at getting groceries scanned quickly through Lindo's PC-based cash register system