Supermarket shoppers will soon be able to get their teeth polished, or pay for that all important filling, when out buying their groceries.

Sainsbury's, whose advertising slogan is “Try something new today”, will unveil the nation's first in-store dental surgery in Sale, near Manchester, next week. The private surgery will offer check-ups from £16 on a first come, first served basis, along with other general and cosmetic dentistry.

It is being set up by Lance Knight, who runs the Ultimate Smile Spa in Manchester, a regular haunt of celebrities such as Caprice, the model, Amir Khan, the boxer, and the Manchester City football team.

He wants to introduce the Sainsbury's Surgery to more stores across the country if the initial trial proves successful.

He told The Times: “We have a private practice that is very successful, but we want to do something for the man in the street. We'll be next to the checkout, near the pharmacy, and I think it will work really well.

“Accessibility is a big problem with dentists - they are often stuck up a back street somewhere. We'll be in the frontline seven days a week.”

Recent figures showed that 35,000 people travelled abroad to countries such as Hungary and Croatia in 2006 for dental procedures.

Mr Knight insisted that his surgery would charge a “fair” price rather than cashing in on people desperate for treatment. An appointment with the hygenist will be £30 - the same price as a basic filling.

“We'd like to roll this out to as many stores as we can,” he added. “The beauty of being in a supermarket is there's a lot of extra space if we need to expand.”

The launch marks the latest attempt by a supermarket to develop other sources of revenue. Earlier this year Sainsbury's signed a ground-breaking deal to offer out-of-hours GP appointments at a a number of stores in the Greater Manchester area.

Over the past decade supermarkets have expanded into clothing, CDs, DVDs, books, furniture and homewares. Asda started an estate agency service at some of its stores in the North East of England two years ago.

David Gilder, the chain's head of professional services, said: “There is a shortage of dental practices and the launch of this service goes some way to providing local people with greater access to dental advice and a range of procedures.”

According to statistics published by the NHS Information Centre, 27 million people, or 53.3 per cent of the population, were treated by NHS dentists in the two years since they were given a new contract in April 2006. That was 1.1 million fewer than the number of patients treated in the two years before that date.

Peter Ward, chief executive of the British Dental Association, has accused the Government of failing to improve access to care for patients and not allowing dentists to provide the type of care that they wanted to deliver.

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