Our local co-op has an acceptable enough atmosphere, but the prices on almost everything are significantly higher than you would find almost anywhere but Waitrose.

What’s up with that?

You’d think that they would at least try to compete with the others.

Ethics are expensive, as are coke and hookers for board members.

most of the supermarkets have different pricing models depending on the size of the outlet. the vast mega warehouse hypermarkets tend to have the cheapest, the “metro” or high street convenience stores are all more expensive, the logic being that the shopper will trade price for the fact that it’s on the way home, or stays open later.

Most Co-Op stores are in that sector.

Plus many Co-ops are located where there is little competition forcing the transport compromised elderly to pay the prices they demand or go without.

Socialist? No!

Ethics are expensive, as are coke and hookers for board members.

I think you’ll find it was crystal meth.

Not sure you can Co-op is more socialist. Waitrose is employee own, workers own the means of… selling things. innit.

Plus many Co-ops are located where there is little competition forcing the transport compromised elderly to pay the prices they demand or go without.

They also buy up property near/around their locations and then block anyone opening anything remotely like competition, thus allowing them to retain higher prices.

Coop are the most confusing retailer I can think of. Prices higher than Waitrose and own label products of worse quality/lower specification than Asda’s basic range.
With a Lidl down the road that is 30% cheaper and better for food I really can’t see the point.

Plus many Co-ops are located where there is little competition forcing the transport compromised elderly to pay the prices they demand or go without.

Under Labour the Co-op ( which supports.. err. Labour* ) was allowed to take control of both supermarkets in our nearest town and the small supermarket in the nearest village.

They are very expensive, but if you want to go somewhere else it’s only an hours bus ride either way.

* Not in a corrupting way, of course 😉

The Co-op bought out the existing farm shop/grocery store near to where I live and Co-opised it despite their having an existing shop a few hundred yards away. They won’t sell either unit for fear a competitor will occupy it.

As above, their own brand ready meals are dire, but are still not cheap.
The prices of their branded foods is more than the local corner shop, and service in our local one is useless.
It is surprising that they are still trading.

They won’t sell either unit for fear a competitor will occupy it.

Wrong. No fear at all. They won’t sell it to deliberately block a competitor from occupying it.

I know of one village near me that has a Coop, and a large empty retail space across the road which used to be a furniture shop, and that is owned by the Coop. Who won’t sell it to anyone selling anything that’s competition. So, the village has a large, empty, sad looking building in it.

They’re no supporters of any real values, apart from commercial success, IMHO.

Coop have a supermarket-sized shop near me which is ok really, very popular with oldies and has utterly lovely staff who seem to have loads of time for their very elderly customers. Cafe in it is very sensibly priced too.
We had a furniture and department store too that closed which was a shame as the latter was a great way to get oficial school uniforms (ie ties, embroidered stuff, rugby shirts etc) and we are definitely paying more to kit out our kids for losing that part -local secondary heads seem to think this too.

However what is better round my way (city council seems to alternate between labour and conservative every 4-6 years if anyone’s bothered) is the load of crap comvenience shops with crap stuff in them under brands like happy shopper, one-stop etc etc (which also sold at higher prices btw) that they have bought up over the years. Convienience shopping is definitely much better round here over the last 10 years for the co op expanding.

Our one is 3 minutes walk and bakes croissants every morning. Lovely hot fresh croissants. Mmm.

Excellent shop in my opinion.

I’m with igm on this..

Co-op retail is one of the few things I actually really get pissed about.

They dress themselves as some lovely, caring, ethical brand, with convenience.

One would naturally accept an element of additional cost with that.

However, what they do is borderline fraudulent – preying on the folk that don’t know any better in the main, otherwise they’d go under (if you do your daily shop at Co-op, you fit in the can’t drive/internet unaware/local store supporting/over 70 category).

So, they do “HALF PRICE – 3 TINS OF JOHN WEST TUNA – WAS: £7.98, NOW HALF PRICE at £3:50”

or “100g OF SHIT PROCESSED HAM WITH SOME BREADCRUMBS – WAS £5.49 – NOW ONLY £2.25”

..and so on. They’re bloody bordeline criminal in their pricing strategies (I know that some supermarkets employ similar tactics, but none are as obscenely ridiculous as Co-Op). They under-staff their stores, pay them crap and basically lie about the RRP of the products they put in their sales.

Tossers.

Frothing double-post.

“WAS 2 POSTS for £8 – NOW 1 POST FOR ONLY £4”

They also buy up property near/around their locations and then block anyone opening anything remotely like competition

So. Much the same as most any other supermarket chain in the UK.

<froths>

So. Much the same as most any other supermarket chain in the UK.

Yep, exactly the same. Just as rapacious as Tesco, especially in rural locations. So, why isn’t there the same frothing rage?

Because they’re much less good at it? Co-op are way off the radar, 5th in line for the hate, Tesco are the 3rd biggest retailer in the world.

Good point. Rapacious, but rubbish.

Nice tagline! 🙂

Co-op Food underlying profits increased 1.5% to £251m in the year to January 3. Overall like-or-likes were up 0.4% and up 3.2% in the ‘core convenience’ stores. Revenues across Co-op Food were £7.09bn.

Waitrose by comparison took a £237.4m operating profit off of £6.5bn revenues

Tesco are the 3rd biggest retailer in the world.

Given Tesco’s losses, surely they’re the better socialists 🙂

Errr, now I’m no expert and in happy to stand corrected, but aren’t waitrose a worker owned business? (John Lewis too for that matter?) I could be wrong but that strikes me as a fairly socialist concept, so surely the thread title should be: ‘Co-op; a rubbish Waitrose’?

There was a Costcutter near me, about the same distance away as a Tesco local attached to the filling station along the road. I used to always go to the Costcutter for Sunday papers, and pick up other odds and ends, good prices, good variety, exactly what you need.
Co-op bought it out, immediately the choice went right down, as did the apparent quality, as did the number of people using it, despite it being right in the middle of a large housing estate.
I always use the Tesco along the road now, especially as I walk right past it on my way home, so convenient for snaffling some beers for the evening.

Their salt and chardonnay vinegar crisps are simply the best of their kind. Long may they trade for them alone.

Indeed, odd pastries aside, just expensive and not that good. The ethical tag is neither here nor there.

Co-op Food underlying profits increased 1.5% to £251m in the year to January 3. Overall like-or-likes were up 0.4% and up 3.2% in the ‘core convenience’ stores. Revenues across Co-op Food were £7.09bn.

Waitrose by comparison took a £237.4m operating profit off of £6.5bn revenues

But also as a comparison thats 3,500 co-op stores vs 200 branches of waitrose.

Two in Prudhoe – the main store and the petrol station.

The main store is bad enough for price, but the garage is even more expensive even though is’d 200m down the road.

The wife has banned me from theme and we have much less month at the end of the money now.She now goes to Aldi, Lidl and Asda.Morrisons.

They have also moved their basic range more upmarket. Butter used to be £1.03 a pat – now it’s £1.49. Same with eggs. Adds up when making cake.

Our Co-op turned into a Morrisons – now a better range, good quality meat and much cheaper – stuff your socialism 🙂

We used to use lots of Co-op services but gave up on them years ago.

When we got a new car (Citroen Dispatch Combi), they insisted it was a van and charged an increased premium for private use. Ignored the fact that it was registered and homologated as an M1 passenger car by Citroen. But somehow they recognised the identical model Peugeot Expert Teepee as a car! And every other insurer I tried also recognised ours as a car from the reg number. After a lot of letters they gave me £100 to leave them alone (rather than correct the mistake in their systems).

Also had to take them to task over a life insurance question “Have you ever visited a hospital?”….

Useless.

All the larger Co-ops near me have been sold to other supermarkets – one to Asda and one to Waitrose. The remaining ones are all the smaller local ones which is probably why the prices are higher. The whole organisation needs a kick up the arse – the last Chief Exec resigned as he considered the group unmanageable – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26525590

The local co-op was used for Bread, Milk, eggs and not much else if I could avoid it (I lived next door) but I did pay the premium for stuff when I needed it and the beer and wine selection was passable (well open till 10pm)

I was talking to a friend who just realised that as it was 4pm on Sunday the only shop left open was the Co-Op, joking that it’s the shop that takes you 4 times as long to walk round looking at the crap before deciding to get take out on a Sunday night.

, their own brand ready meals are dire, but are still not cheap.

I agree. The worst ready meal curry out there. I do wonder who (and if) they got to taste test this stuff and in which decade they last did (70’s or 80’s ?). They do sell some decent stuff though and do not (over) charge as much as Sainsburys Local.

We have seen some improvements with the co-op though, some of the staff now actually talk and not all of them throw your food down the checkout.

Pretty much every town/village around us has a Co-Op, along with other supermarkets in the bigger towns.

Yes, they are more expensive than the big supermarkets, but all are far smaller. No problem here with quality, although prices are higher but so is the convenience.

And compared to the average corner shop/Spar etc, they sell fresh meat, veg and decent bakery products. Although luckily around here we still have local butchers, bakers and veg shops.

No one is forcing you to buy from them.

I don’t care about ethics. I only go in there for their £1 chocolate deals. I do this far more often than I should. Damn you co-op and your special offers.

I don’t care about ethics. I only go in there for their £1 chocolate deals. I do this far more often than I should. Damn you co-op and your special offers.

Good man neither do I !

Black Farmer sausages 10 for 3 squiddlies top snorkers 😀

This thread seems to be full of the misconceptions of the ‘co-op’ retail brand – the brand, across the country, is made up from a cooperative of lots of different companies, hense the name. These smaller companies work together to make the brand larger and supply support and help to each other.
There is coop group, midcounties coop, sothern coop, central England coop etc etc. So dependent on where you live you may get a different level of service and products / deals than some one else.

Each of these companies is members owned – so when you get the reward card you own £1 worth of that company and get yearly dividends based on profit. It’s not like sainsbury or tesco card schemes where you get offers / money based on your own spend.

The coop buissness model employs 250 million people world wide and provides 12% of the employment in the g20 countries.

As for political views the vast majority of the companies that make up the coop brand do not support or provide money to the Labour party – they actually support the Cooperative Party.

I am always surprised by the amount of stuff I manage to buy from our local co-op for the money.

And some of their own brand stuff is pretty good it seems to me. Better quality than Morrisons, for example.

Go there regularly, and the local Waitrose as well. Co-op is a lot cheaper.