Supermarket snobbery

I live in a small sized market town, where the main supermarket is Morrisons, though there are little Sainsburys and Asda + Lidl.

I visited Lidl for the first time a couple of months back to pick up one of their on offer egg type barbecues, and have been tempted back by the quality of their fresh fruit and veg., together with their cooked continental meats.

Whilst the superb local butcher and fish shop get most of my custom, Lidl does hit the spot in the areas mentioned.

You get ‘wonky veg’ at Morrisons!

I (we) would love to use Waitrose, but none are that close so we only go once in a while & when we need to go to somewhere else thats close-by.
Our usual weekly big shop is at Sainsburys, we like the ‘Smart Shop’ checkout. But they’re going downmarket in what appears an attempt to fight the bottom end players, quality & availability has suffered, we’re looking at alternatives but nothing attracts for convenience.
Coop is our local walk to store, bread, milk, veg & fruit
Asda, the nearest big supermarket, no thanks, quality not the best, some good prices but will use only if I have to
Tesco, ditto, no thanks
M&S, nice little food store, limited but good quality & somethings different.
Lidl, tried once, disappointed with quality & the store itself
Aldi & Morisons, to far, wrong side of town.

I have to give a big shout-out for our local butcher, yes in a village we still have a real butcher, he sources from local farms, they take in whole or quarter carcasses & do it all from there. Eggs are local, poultry comes from a little further away. They always have a good selection of local & traditional cheeses, local made pies & pasties, home cooked hams & home made summer time BBQ specials.
If you’ve got one of those then you are well blessed - make sure you use them - once they’re gone, you’re might need to consider prepacked from Lidl .

I shop at Waitrose if I can. The quality and choice of products is far better than all the others. The prices aren’t higher and find Waitrose have far more offers and actually save more money there than anywhere else.

Tescos is ok and there are some products in there that can only be found there, but quality drops and prices are no different to Waitrose. There are also less offers.

Sainsburys is not good for me. Poor choice, expensive, no offers and the parking is tight.

Aldi has some good products, but choice is terrible. Can’t do a full shop there, so waste time. The beef and free-range chicken is excellent.

Morrisons is absolutely awful.

Booths is very limited choice, very expensive and the paying more for something there doesn’t result in better produce.

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Love Booths but non near us. IMHO a notch up above Waitrose. As far as I’m concerned Waitrose is no more expensive than Sainsburys (the only other supermarket I have experience with) BUT Booths is DEFINITELY expensive. However it’s still our 'market of choice when we’re in the Ripon or Lakes areas.

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It seems that the relative merits of supermarkets vary across the country.

In my area (Bath) I’d say Waitrose was at the top but poorly situated.

Sainsbury’s have a good site and a good supermarket but a poor fish counter.

Morrisons have the best fish counter and ok veg plus it’s on the right side of town for me. However very poor selection of free range meat… Why do they always have free range chicken and eggs but not pork when pigs are far more intelligent than chickens…

M&S too small to consider.

Lidl (or is it Aldi?) has surprisingly good fruit and veg and has some half decent wine at a good price.

Neither Tesco nor Asda exists in a large store.

Older than Jupp, it was an Alan Coren line!

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What a fantastic idea for a thread. I used to have a professional interest in this sort of thing, because grocery retailing was a specialism of mine as a journalist (years ago, I used to often write for the industry journal The Grocer and indeed used to subscribe to it until last year, when work took a different turn. Nielsen, Kantar and others still send me monthly figures on the supermarket sector, and they always make for interesting reading). It is an absolutely fascinating subject, and it plays an important role in all our lives.

I am lucky(?) enough to live in a fairly affluent but economically and racially diverse area of South London, so within walking distance I have a Sainsbury’s, a Sainsbury’s Local, a Tesco, Tesco Metro, Waitrose, M&S Simply Food, Aldi, Lidl, two Co-ops and an Asda, as well as a good selection of independents and specialists (eg a very good butcher, fishmonger, deli etc).

As a result, retailers use our area as a bit of a test bed for new concepts and formats. Last October Aldi opened its first-ever “Aldi Local” store (selling a smaller selection than a standard Aldi, with longer opening hours and an emphasis on fresh and chilled goods as well as “food to go”, ready meals, bagged salads, beers, wines and spirits etc), and Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have also tested new concepts and formats here.

South-West London, where I have lived for the past 30 years, has always been Sainsbury’s country, so until a few years that was my main shop.

Over the past few years I have diversified my shop - this has been the case with most people since the 2008 crash. All the data suggest we as a nation are shopping more frequently, shopping more locally (ie at places within walking distance rather than out-of-town sheds), buying less at each shop, and are shopping more promiscuously - ie, we’re becoming less and less loyal to one particular supermarket and shopping using a “portfolio”.

In my own case, I have a lot of choice, and I shop mostly at Aldi and Sainsbury’s, but use Lidl, Waitrose, M&S and the Co-op for top-ups or stuff they do well, and I buy meat from the butcher. I never use Tesco, the service and availability are terrible and the company is an absolutely horrible one. Asda is just a grothole, never go there.

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Some products are supermarket specific, of course.
For a good few years the larger Tesco had Toulouse sausages to die for, but discontinued.
Waitrose branded jalapeño tortilla chips, guacamole with chunky bits and a big chilli hit.
Sainsbury’s spring greens that are there always.
Coop for St Helens Farm Goats milk. Tesco unsalted organic butter. Coop ancient grain bread.
Sometimes the big open markets for fresh Oregano. Sometimes the Asian superstore for dried squid.
Sometimes the little Russian/Muslim store for those big jars of amazing pickled gherkins.

Lucky that I live just opposite the local butchers. I can see when they have had a delivery and can just pop over for a fresh as a daisy chop - also let me buy on credit. Like the local stores always used to, they have a big book on the counter.
My mother taught me that little trick when I used to get the vegetable shop from the grocery down the road as an errand for pocket money.

@TimOopNorth - I can’t name the manufacturers concerned (the big brands don’t like admitting that they maunfacture own-label goods for the big supermarkets and wholesalers), I would get into a lot of trouble, but there is a delicious irony in that the “lookalike” items you mention are often made by the very people whose brands they look like!

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Even more than the Daily Mail, the Guardian is a repositry of appalling, petty middle-class snobbery, so that description doesn’t surprise me at all.

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Great comments Steeve.

I think you may be correct about them cutting back on staff in Waitrose. We used to have one in Cardiff City Centre - you’d have thought that would have been profitable but it closed.

I used to buy loads of ready meals for my elderly parents and tried to rotate shops but eventually most came from M&S as to me they looked better quality and mum preferred them, but it wasn’t me eating them.

That Aldi checkout scanning rate target is crazy.

Nice if you have a local traditional butcher shop, virtually all of our nearby ones have closed. A few halal butchers have opened recently however.

Yes, the typcial high street of yesteryear seems to be betting shops, charity shops, nail/hair salons, pawn brokers and the new kid on the block ‘the vape shop’ - I think there may be half a dozen of the latter on a nearby street.

I spotted a couple of halal butchers working in store at a Morrison’s in Preston the other day, which was a new one on me. Fairly big Asian foods section too. Speaking of which, I have on occasion visited an Sian supermarket - fabulous for buying fresh coriander and the like at a fraction of normal supermarket prices

I chatted to one very friendly woman on the checkout at Aldi. They have a target for staff to scan 1000 items per hour. She said she managed 1,100 although whenever I’ve seen her she always looks like she is on speed! Consequently they always scan your items super fast and initially I felt guilty for being slow at packing but she explained to me that it was fine as the clock stops once they have they selected either cash or card payment payments on their terminals! I don’t think they have any self-service terminals there either.

Interestingly, if you look at Aldi goods, you will find the barcodes are a) huge; b) printed on multiple surfaces and c) printed in easily accessible spots on the package. This, coupled with the very good training Aldi give, allows the staff to scan at a phenomenal rate. Aldi (Lidl increasingly uses self-service checkouts) doesn’t favour self-scanning, but they are trialling it in my local South London branch. It’s amazingly simple (much easier than every other supermarket) and the size/placement of barcodes makes scanning super-fast.

I normally hate self-service checkouts but in Aldi Local they’re pretty good.

Love that branch in Ripon.

Aah yes, I forgot! We have just got one of those, also 3 Indian take-aways, 3 Chinese take-aways, 2 chip shops, 1 café and a tattoo parlour! Good NHS dentist though as well I forgot about. It’s only one street in a local area close but not in the town centre so probably not more than 35-40 shop units in total as some of the street is residential as well. I forgot to say we used to have a bakers as well which has gone. Must be at least 6 hairdressers and 3 nail salons just in the one street and they’ve been there a while now so must be doing ok. These changes have all happened within the last 19 years since I moved there.

Asda’s are the worst. They seem to have the cheapest/slowest/most inefficient IT systems which take forever to respond and often need someone to come over and fix problems!

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You can always tell your shopping within a quality store when waiting in line behind a young pretty Irish lady wearing pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers.
With a huge black SUV parked illegally and inconveniently just outside the entrance doors.

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Before retirement i worked the night-shift, leaving work at 06:00hr was perfect to visit the nearest and most convenient 24hr supermarket Tesco just mile away up the road from my workplace. An early time of the morning is great for wizzing around with the trolly getting everything needed in 10 minutes flat, though the checkout and off home to bed :+1:

Since retirement i need to do a special journey for the weekly shop, a different Tesco in another direction of some 11 miles, however Tesco no longer seem to sell the Allinson wholemeal bread i like, so another day i stock up with bread while passing a Co-op that’s in a very different neck of the woods from home but also around 11 miles away.

Tesco have also stopped selling the Kenco Rappor instant coffee i’m addicted to, because apparently it’s no longer Kenco brand anymore since Morrisons bought the rights, so now an occasion visit to any local Morrisons to stock purchase half a dozen jars of Rappor…

Tesco never have stocked any red wine i’ve appreciated, so a 13 mile away bi-yearly visit to the local wine merchant to stock up with a few cases of Cantele.

I’m not at all snobby with my wines, bread or coffee, it’s just that my tastes buds are still in perfect working order :stuck_out_tongue:

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That sounds like our closest proper Tesco - think I mentioned above it’s rather more downmarket than the one 2-3 miles away, different demographic entirely.

I don’t think the Irish have a monopoly on the pyjama brigade - either doing the school run or shopping with their sprogs in ‘onesies’.

As you note they always park their strangely expensive or large vehicles on the double yellow lines, such a culture of entitlememnt.

Talking of sprogs The Sun had a great headline today:

They were amused by this on Classic FM earlier.