I do like a good supermarket thread. It’s a great barometer of social snobbery! People are just people y’know?

Was watching Bladerunner (again!) earlier, which is set in 2019 but made in 1982, and some of the big contemporary brands at the time that are on display in future Los Angeles are Atari (remember them!) and TDK (of cassette and video tape fame!) so I guess anything can happen. The business model of being the cheapest, lowest common denominator is always going to work though, be it Tesco or someone else no?

safeway and quicksave were swallowed up by bigger retailers – I’d love to know who is going to swallow tesco….

I’d bet they’ll be here in 20 yrs time, I think we have a socio-efficient set of food retailers a bit like we do with uk high street banks, not too many, not too few

Sigh……ill be quick, sometimes I wonder why the **** I bother?. I’ve shopped there for the past 10 years using my bag, never an issue, new manager comes in, jumped up little prick, tells me that im not allowed to use my bag and to use a basket, continue to use bag and allow him to look inside it one time only at the checkout as the girls say ” kenny always uses his bag” end of story. goodnight, sleep tite

one of the lowest common denominators on council TV is also loads of bloody cooking/chef type programmes, that all people seem to love. And they all bang on about quality ingredients/local produce though and how evil cheap processed stuff is. It’s all about perception. You can cook a brilliant meal from tesco value peppers and cheapo value frozen sweetcorn etc that’ll taste and look just the same as the perfectly formed expensive stuff! The supermarkets are well on top of that though and adjust accordingly. I love the tier system of food branding in supermarkets. Value – standard – special -extra special. I wonder if this is extra special to Britain though? The class system is alive and well in yer local supermarket. Their marketing bods probably peruse sites like STW to guage opinion!

Somafunk – you wouldn’t have a problem in our local ASDA, it’s pretty good at looking after the special needs of local customers 😀

My local Tesco has its own hairdressers. I reckon it’ll still be about in 20 years.

I real good mate of mine owns a apple (and pear) farm in Kent and supplies Tesco with royal gala apples and all sorts of pears…

We where chatting over Christmas about the poor crop of apples this year , and he mentioned that when Tesco offer buy one get one free on apples ( his gala apples) they play hard ball and the FREE apples (usually bagged for convenience) are paid for by HIM! ! Not by Tesco , they pay his company half the agreed price per kg / tonne and when there questioned tell the poor old farmer they are running a offer !

For that reason I actively avoid Tesco, can I say wank3rs on here ?!

to the guy dissin lidl. first the fruit and veg is delivered fresh every morning and overnight to the rdc the day before so it’s never sat there till it’s rotten. they are audited more than any other supermarket and 3 rotten pieces of fruit and veg is a fail and can cost you your job. the range is continental so you have antipasti and quail at regular prices you’d pay 3 Times the prices for the same product in waitrose. 99% of all the fruit and veg is pesticide free so is as good as organic for regular prices.
Meat and poultry is supplied by the best UK supplier. asda used to use the Same one 10years ago before they got cheap and sell you nasty Irish shit.

oh and Tescos is number 1 in the UK and has been for years, not going anywhere.

Yeah, it’s mostly made up by Rhod Gilbert.

Ah, I thought it sounded familiar 😉

That’s one of the reasons the company i work for as a chocolatier will not supply Tescos with any produce at all, as well as the owner having a healthy disregard of them since they refused to open up a till for her trolley load of shopping very late at night in the larger local(ish) Tesco as they’re was no-one available, her reasoning was that if you want me to scan and bag my own trolley full of goods and charge me the same price whilst removing one person from a paying job on the shop floor then i’m not shopping here again, true to her word she’s not been back, Tescos can and do screw the supplier with regard to bogof offers all the time.

Speaking of FRESH fruit n veg, is anyone going to mention HOW LONG the stuff can be (and is) kept “on hold” for in massive cold stores, before it hits the shops ?

Sorry my personal stalkers, never owned a TV in my life, nor seen rhod gilbert – although i did watch “up” at my parents at New Year, thought it was ok, nowt special though.

Anyone remember safeway or kwiksave

Where I grew up, the Safeway became Morrisons, the little Kwiksave became a Somerfield and then a Co-Operative Food, the big Kwiksave became a Tesco, and the Lo-Cost also became a Co-Operative Food.

I used to work for Tesco when I was at uni, this thread has reminded me that I need to get around to selling my shares! 😛

interesting stuff pitchpro, I get 10% discount at Asda, but still get half my shopping from Aldi/Lidl cos I have to watch the pennies and like fairly decent quality food. I don’t care about brands. I’ll try something that’s cheaper, and if it’s as good, I’ll continue to buy that from that place. A lot of people are thinking like this now and the big four have to catch up. I thought the Aldi ad campaign was so true. I guess there is a point where stuff becomes cheap/good quality where people out of your general picture are suffering to produce it though and they don’t tell you this in the ads. Even **** shopping is a moral quagmire! I’m waiting forr the day when high street charity shops sell food! 😀

As i remember 35yrs ago our supermarket (large shop wi parking for 10 cars) started of with a “Templetons”, then it was a “Safeway”, then a “Somerfield”, then a “Morrisons”, now we have a “Tesco” and by this rate we should have a “Sainsbury’s” next year, 4 yrs later a “M&S Food Hall” and in 10 or so years a “Waitrose”.

I’m looking forward to a “Waitrose”, never even seen a Waitrose store never mind shopped in one….from what i read on here they are mythical places populated by investment bankers and rich dentists, with the occasional yummy mummy looking to pick a pre lunchtime fumble round the back of the fresh food aisle.

It’s all very exciting 😯

I have noticed a steady decline in tesco over the past year or so

The fruit and veg is hit and miss at best

Tesco own brand stuff all seems full of sugar and salt

In the last month they have really pissed me off by stopping stocking lindt 90%

only trouble is, tesco is the only supermarket around here

If a fish is twice as much in Tesco as in Asda, that probably just means Asda got a good deal on a particular batch of fish. Or they are running a loss leader.

That’s an assumption and looking other produce compared to Asda Tescos are poor in quality and high in price and they are always ending lines there unlike Asda. So it’s not complicated to see the difference, supermarkets though like to confuse matters with their misleading special offers and two for ones and such like.

Serious question for all the supermarket shoppers – are there no butchers, bakers, grocers etc near you?

I can just about tolerate getting some stuff from a big chain but not the basics. Maybe I’m lucky where I am but I can get locally grown fruit and veg, locally reared meat and locally caught fish, local cheese and local bread without having to set foot in a supermarket. I can get it in the quantity I want and I can get special offers that don’t just impact the supplier.

Is this unusual? I was under the impression that most people were able to get hold of decent local stuff these days but I might be wrong.

My whole career has revolved around building supermarkets. I shop at Sainsbury’s. 8)

Yossarian, I think for people with little money and time constraints – most people – it’s a really easy, simple option. Like I say, supermarkets offer the lowest common denominator. All in one place with parking. It’s as simple as that. I do sort of remember what a proper carrot tastes like though.

wallop – Member
My whole career has revolved around building supermarkets. I shop at Sainsbury’s.

Burn him, Post reported 😉

I have mentioned on other threads that i work for a super market as a deputy manager. But never said where,I work for Aldi, and can tell you that there fruit and veg is very fresh, delivered to head office warehouse then to stores within 24 hours orders made 2 days in advance on predicted sales.

I could go into the many ways they keep prices down other than limited branding, small staff teams and the other obvious stuff but other than that it is in our contracts not to discuss the workings of the company.

But i Will tell you they defiantly arn’t struggling, and have NO debt

NIce one Rescott. don’t think stw realise us supermarket workers actually graft our asses off and follow all sorts of criteria just so they can bitch and moan! If you aren’t happy with the service, Go straight to customer service and slag off person/availablity/freshness or whatever that pished you off. It’s a form of quality control, by customers. If enough customers make noises, things change.

Tesco provide a service, everything a family could need to survive and then a few luxuries.

They even have fairly competent butchers and fishmongers on the payroll.

Sure, you can go to the other specialist shops, and yes you can pick up some things like oxtail, or potatoes with real mud on them, but for a lot of people they don’t want that, they want it as quick and simple as possible.

I reckon with a bit of research almost anything can be found for a cheaper price, so what if you can save a couple of quid on a trout, hardly the staple diet of this country is it and besides who has the time to spend hours checking prices eh? And if you have, please consider doing something more useful with it.

That said, I’ll shop at the butchers locally when I drop my daughter off for her Saturday morning ballet class, but really, if I’m honest, because it’s convenient to do so.

I do also buy a sack of local, muddy, potatoes from the local greengrocer, when he has them anyway, because they taste nice.

Oh and I’ve yet to find proper mozzarella in a supermarket, beggars belief how they get away with selling the rubber muck they do.

But apart from that they do ok 🙂

Aldi are the ones to watch – they will grow massively in the next few years. 200 more stores on the way?

Tesco have lost market share for the last few quarters.

I’d love to avoid tesco/co-op if I could but its just not always practical, I work pretty much 6 days/week from early to late at two different but both mimimum paying jobs and there is no other choice for food shopping in my rural Galloway town, no grocers as that shut down years ago, we do have a bakers that is open to 9pm on a Friday night with fresh baked bread and I buy my fresh bread from there for the following week. Being a vegi I don’t eat packaged meals/ plastic food etc and I generally make a dose of meals or a pot of something on a Sunday for the coming week and either freeze portions or chill them, i get my cheese n coffee beans n treats from a friends small deli (size of a large cupboard really). Buy my veg n fruit and staples from tescos as its open when I finish work, I’d love something like a farmers market or proper farm veg shop but the nearest one is over 35 miles away and that’d cost me near enough £20 in fuel for a round trip. I buy as little as possible from tescos which is quite easy when u live on your own so I guess I prob spend only £25/30 a week on food there but given the choice I’d rather not spend anything with them, That’s not possible though.

There are a lot of people who use supermarkets but still make out they are the cause of all the worlds problems 🙂

I use supermarkets for stuff like tinned goods, non perishable stuff etc. I go once every couple of months and buy a proper load. Stick to the deals where I can (from big companies not local growers etc) and stock up on stuff.

For fresh stuff I buy locally in the butchers/grocers etc, meat (don’t buy much) fruit and Veg (buy loads) bread (not often)

Doing it that way, I buy stuff when I need it, and hardly ever waste any food. Plus it really does seem that the Fruit and Veg tastes so much nicer !!

I probably shop more at Aldi than any other supermarket otherwise I will buy from a farm shop or local butcher who doesn’t pump the meat full of water.

the best place I’ve lived for cheap, varied, fresh fruit and veg, straight off a boat, open 24hrs, was when I lived in Dalston, London. If those Turkish boys opened up a shop here in Llandudno I’d be all over it!

Just buy your salad from a kebab shop then 😆

The future is Turkish!

I do wonder about the placebo effect on the taste difference between the veg from supermarkets and local greengrocers etc.
I’ve eaten veg from my own garden, from greengrocers and from Tescos.
Can’t say I’ve noticed a big difference. Maybe my palate isn’t as refined as some on here.

The thing that made me start to notice it more, was after years of cooking with standard white onions from the supermarket, I bought some of the same from the local farm shop and remembered that chopping onions is supposed to make your eyes water, and these buggers really did ! but the supermarket ones haven’t done for ages.

I started to taste the veggies raw and the farm shop stuff just tastes better, well I suppose its not a “better” taste, just more taste.

maybe it’s childhood memories as well? When I was a little kid in mid wales my dad used to take us to a farm to get all our veg. I remember popping peapods and eating carrots in a field and them being really sweet and tasty (I wouldn’t eat ’em otherwise). So is it my childhood nostalgia influencing my tastebuds? (old man hat) what do kids percieve as natural and tasty now? is supermarket food bland? is the process of getting the food too simple and monotonous? are my tastebuds killed by booze? I’m going on wikipedia!…

I must admit to enjoying broccoli (wierdo!) wi a good balsamic vinegar over it but i got given a fair amount of purple sprouting broccoli last year from a local gardener i did a favour for rather than bought from a supermarket and it had so much flavour that i didn’t need to use any dressing apart from a knob of butter and a touch of ground pepper, t’was luscious and i’d would love a wee veg plot out the back but one of the neighbours has 9 cats and they destroyed my raised herb bed wi turds so i imagine they’d just love it if i built them a veg plot so it’s not worth it.

I only shop in Waitrose when I’m in the UK. Tesco’s is full of fat smelly people in tracksuits from what I remember.

Atari (remember them!) and TDK

Atari got bought up iirc but still operate

TDK – the internet says $10.55 billion in revenue for 2011, wiki so pinch of salt required

On that basis they’ll probably be fine

I’d have picked the British domestic car industry as an example

I only shop in Waitrose when I’m in the UK. Tesco’s is full of fat smelly people in tracksuits from what I remember.

Yes, that’s about right. Although we don’t have a Waitrose here so there usual customers are mixed in with the fat smellys looking somewhat disgruntled.

My experiance of tescos here is a high proportion of self important get out of my way im better than you types marching round at hi speed mobiles glued to their ears.

Doesnt make for a stress free shopping trip.

I only shop in Waitrose when I’m in the UK. Tesco’s is full of fat smelly people in tracksuits from what I remember.

At least say hello, next time!

*dons tracksuit*

Re; Gala Apple story above…
A local farmers got approached by Tescos to produce more spuds than he would’ve preferred so he bought new equipment and geared his whole farm up to go spud crazy. They squeezed his margins over the next couple of years and then pulled out completely leaving him in debt.
I avoid Tescos like the plague. Apart from their shoddy ethics, I find visiting the local store an unpleasant experience. Checkout chicks that converse about their Friday night antics and have a ‘1000yd stare’ expression when you ask them a simple customer service question leave me cold and unimpressed. The local Asda is marginally worse and both are populated by the sort of people who I feel the need to put soap in their trollies.
Our local butcher is amazing but I go to Waitrose for most other things – a much more pleasant shopping experience.