The UK and Ireland Supermarkets Poll

i was in a huge supermarket late the other week and had to restrain myself from taking crappy andreas gurkyish iphone shots of seemingly endless corridors suffused in that sickly despatializing weak strip lighting that makes it feel like you have a bad case of flu

My favourite ever random supermarket find - my former local south London council estate Londis inexplicably running a special offer, in a big display on the counter between the fags and the lottery machine, of special-edition hardcovers of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo

thank god they didn't use that other conrad novel

don't really care, find process of grocery shopping equally hellish in them all (but marginally less hellish than attempting to buy ~ingredients~ from ~farmers' markets~ or whatever)

i really like eating when i'm, y'know, eating, but when i'm shopping or contemplating cooking i resent the fact that we have to eat so so much

ha

i thought you had forsworn cooking entirely?

Sainsbury's seems to have a decent balance of quality and price. I'd probably shop at Waitrose if i wanted to spend the extra money.

Whole Food Market in Kensington is remarkable. It's the size of an aircraft hanger and i've never seen more than about six people, usually looking like the willowy wives of embassy staff, shopping in there at any one time. It has an on-site art director but no actual customers. I always go in looking for something, fail to find it, and come out with an obscure type of cooking salt.

Aldi and Lidl are great - particularly around Christmas when half the stock is taken up by unusual German biscuits. I like the fact that all the Costcutters in my area have a distinct identity - Turkish spices in one, Brazilian stuff in another, Polish food in a third.

Dunnes Stores is ok - they seem to have finally cottoned on to the fact that there's a recession and and cut the prices to something more reasonable.

I remember the 'flagship' Whole Foods opening in London but there was already one in Bristol that was actually called 'Fresh & Wild' but had massive Whole Foods signs inside. It was pretty shit though, just any old collection of food that had 'organic' on the label and therefore way expensive. Good for getting a few one-off things I suppose. Whole Foods is my nearest store in the US and it's completely different; I expect that London one is more like it. Anyway, the Bristol one is a Waitrose now which is far better.

Will avoid Tescos if I have the option. Used to have a decent Sainsburys on the way home from work which was actually pretty good. Would like a fresh meat counter though. What is great about Sainsburys: good online delivery and awesome 'Taste the Difference' sticky toffee pudding.

Hang on. Dunnes Stores? Isn't that an Irish clothing store??

Also a supermarket.

This poll misses out Ireland's only vaguely premium supermarket: Superquinn.

As a student I worked as a product demonstrator in both Dunnes and Supervalu, and my god, Supervalu was where it was at. Smaller, more accessible supermarkets where the staff didn't get treated like complete shit and didn't (for example), have to call each other by their surnames. Not cheap, but handy and usually pretty good.

i like the way sainsburys has an "adult cereals" sign in the cereal aisle. porn flakes.

^^ I'll go out of my way to try that sticky toffee pudding, ta!

xxp

ha ha xp

gonna throw Lidl a vote because I get a weird sense of calm from their mixture of German efficiency, east European austerity and the scatterbrained dottiness of a white-haired grandma

also they used to do a bottle of Kentucky bourbon for *£8* which actually managed to be pretty drinkable, think that might be a distant memory only mind

Lidl has some great stuff in it but you'd struggle to do a satisfying whole shop i think. there's none of these that are near perfect tbh but we had a dope Moussaka from Waitrose last week and apparently they're not complete rip-off fascist cunts like what i thought? i mean within the limits of being a rip-off cunt capitalist business like.

i really like eating when i'm, y'know, eating, but when i'm shopping or contemplating cooking i resent the fact that we have to eat so so much

i love cooking once i can be arsed but otherwise lex otm

i thought you had forsworn cooking entirely?

by "cooking" i mean any process i can manage to fuck up, which has included over the past week boiling an egg (ripped in half when i tried to peel it), making toast (burnt), warming up a ready meal (completely burnt despite my timing it EXACTLY) and buttering crackers (broke in half and fell on floor).

anyway my actual experiences

Asda - only been to one or two of these in my life, think of them as gargantuan out-of-town warehouses full of horrible loud families
Co-op - i like their font
Costcutter - kinda grim and unsuitable for anything resembling a meal, depending on where you are you can get nice turkish/polish/caribbean snacks though
Iceland - i don't know why anyone would put anything sold here into their mouth
Lidl - probably the best, ie super-cheap but pretty full of decent quality continental food - salami/cheese etc products in partic
Marks & Spencer - i think 90% of my M&S purchases are salad pots to eat on trains, those are always quite reliably nice
Morrisons - nice deli stuff i think, everything else pretty par for the course, would not object if i had to shop here regularly
Ocado - isn't this just waitrose delivery service?
Sainsbury's - probably the one i've shopped at most in the past few years, no real complaints tbh
SPAR - like costcutter except without the random ethnic food
Tesco - i wish there were more proper tescos and fewer tesco metros that stock the same disappointing 5% of their range. no real complaints otherwise, don't see anything wrong with having to shop here
Waitrose - never really lived close enough to one to assess their food, i'm sure it's nice
Whole Foods Market - offensively expensive and disgustingly smug

like doing a big shop makes me tired then irritable then a shade suicidal

I find doing the Big Shop in Tesco to be quite a pleasant experience. Waitrose is rare enough in The North to be a bit exotic and therefore exciting. There's a dead space which is too north for Waitrose and too south for Booths, where nobody is expected to have any culinary expectation whatsoever.

the giant Tesco in town has lots of good things in it but i think my enthusiasm wears off quite quickly whereas Mrs V is efficient and thorough and at some point during that process i go thru the tired-irritable-suicidal process

if i manage to time it so that i need to do a massive massive shop of every possible thing i need, online delivery is the only way to go really (always go through sainsbury's) - removes allllll the stress

yeah that's the prob with lidl, for me i'd have ro walk 20 mins to get there, which would be grand except they don't have tons of the basics. one thing that bugs me about supermarkets lately is that a lot of them seem to have stopped keeping the discounted stuff in one place. don't know why but you could get some amazing bargains in waitrose in particular...

x-post think i said this before on ilx but personally i really enjoy food shopping, i find it cathartic and relaxing once i go at the right time. it's a nice place to think and i walk about 15 mins back from supermarket too...

Tesco Metro or whatever tend to infuriate me because OK, I understand you're a convenience store so go ahead and sell lots of snacks instead of rare herbs and spices or whatever, but why use about 25% of your shelf space to stock 8 million 2-litre bottles of Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi and bottled water when you could be expanding the range of pizzas?

I hate the small shops like that...they're just frustrating and I always end up cooking something boring, facile or unhealthy when I shop in them.

we have started ordering online lately, i thought it was mad decadence at first but you end up buying less than you would when you're impulse-trawling in a bricks and mortar shop so it works out okay. also we still have proper butchers and greengrocers and awesome cheap freezer shops on our street so i can buy local out of laziness rather than pomposity

i've still never done it but i know i should...

as someone who's worked in tesco, them

Waitrose,though im hardly ever in it because it is on byre's road in the wanky west end.

Online delivery is a lifesaver. I haven't done a "big shop" in about 10 years (mainly due to not having a car and luckily having a largeish sainsburys on my way home from work). I used to get fresh stuff every other day from there and order online all the bulky stuff like loo roll, kitchen cleaners, multiple tins/jars of tomatoes/tuna/pasta sauce, big packs of pasta, frozen stuff, etc.

if i could afford to do my shopping in waitrose my life would be immeasurably better. as it is i go in there to buy a few things i really like and to scan the shelves for reduced stickers which can produce some amazing bargains.

It's got to be Waitrose, but a good Sainsbury's will stock most of the stuff I need. I buy quite a lot of stuff in Lidl though, they have some good odds and sods, but the one near me never seems to be fully stocked, you can't depend on it for a weekly shop.

I like the Budgens near to us as well, lots of local produce, great bread, but they are very variable.

lidl/aldi yeah same problem, go for a look but you never know what will be there.

although a lot of waitrose stuff is reasonable e.g their pizzas - the frozen ones are particularly good believe it or not, much better than the chilled ones. other things are pricier than tesco but worth the spend. a hell of a lot of it is still ridicly expensive but in spite of that you never actually feel like you are being ripped off like you do in tesco. it's probably, generally dear for a reason or maybe i've just fallen for it.

Aldi and Lidl are great - particularly around Christmas when half the stock is taken up by unusual German biscuits.

Oh yeah, they deserve at least one vote for this. And a fraction of the price of Waitrose. Love me some pfefferkuchen.

I've got to say I hate the massive Tesco's/ASDAs (and the Sainbury's I used to go to has recently gone huge). I appreciate the fact I can probably get everything I need but I can never remember where that everything is, and by the third of fourth time through looking for (to give one particularly distressing example) whole brazil nuts I am ready to abandon the trolley. And they move stuff around the bastards.

"bring me my hasenpfeffer!"

Aldi - never been
Asda - used to live near one, walked further to go to Sainsbury's. Awful.
Booths - Eh?
Budgens - Rubbish
Centra - Never heard of it
Co-op - Never lived near one of them, like the idea
Costcutter - Every Costcutter I've been in has been the most ridiculous misnomer ever. Shite.
Dunnes Stores - Never been
Eurospar - ???
Filco Foods - What?
Haldanes - What are these places?
Iceland - Rubbish
Lidl - I understand they're better than their budget nature would suggest
Londis - Shit.
Mace - Never heard of it.
Marks & Spencer - Okay if you want to buy a sandwich or poncey readymeal but I'd never do a full shop there
Morrisons - Always been okay when I've been in one, never lived near enough to go regularly
Netto - See Lidl
Nisa-Today's - Like a less egregious Costcutter
Ocado - Never used it
Sainsbury's - Decent range/cost/accessibility/quality
SuperValu - ???????
SPAR - See Londis
Tesco - Quality is kinda ropey compared to Sainsbury's, their ubiquity makes them lazy
Waitrose - Never lived close enough to one but they're John Lewis so I approve
Whole Foods Market - Smug

Co-op - Never lived near one of them, like the idea

Saw some TV expose about the Co-op, and they are actually the worst for paying farmers a decent price. Like, they pay less than TESCO.

I used to shop at Dunnes Stores when I lived in Dublin, seem to recall it was alright, if a bit pricey, but everything was pricey in Dublin at that time, the Irish pound was worth more than sterling.

do you shop at all man?

Eurospar have had a major facelift the past few years, now they tend ti be filling station/convenience stores with good hot food counters to boot. Useful.

I assume most of these places just don't exist in London.

Netto has gone I think, some of the stores have been taken over. They were never as good as Lidl or Aldi anyway, none of the continental goodies and random snacks that make the other two worth a visit. Co-op seem to be all convenience stores now charging convenience store prices but they do mark down stuff pretty savagely when it gets near the Use By date. Most of these seem to have one little treat that nobody else does the same but these things go in and out of production seemingly.

Every time I go into Waitrose I am struck with awe, and jealousy of everyone who has one nearby. It is pretty much impossible to get out of one without spending at least £40 though, even if you've just gone in for a sandwich.

There's no Waitrose anywhere near me either but tbh we get most of our groceries delivered by Ocado, fuck carrying 40lbs of cat litter all the way from Sainsburys. Have tried Tesco & Sainsburys home delivery but they both fucking suck.

Netto is still around, theres one in Birtley we use sometimes.

co-op still has proper supermarkets in the west country, and the highlands of scotland. have seen them in northern england around the lake district/cumbria too.

In May 2010, Netto UK was bought by Asda Wal-Mart UK for £778m. The Choice by Asda was increase it smaller store portfolio. 147 of the former UK Netto stores will be re-branded under the Asda name by summer 2011. The remaining 47 stores have been sold off to other companies such as Morrisons and new convenience store UGO and other retailers due to competition laws.

wondering if this UGO is the same peeps who make expensive faux-deli sandwiches for garages and the like

am gonna get shopping delivered this week, just to see.

Lidl/aldi special weekly offers must be taken into account here. Tv's, pc, hard-drives, car radiosbarbecues and power tools all purchased from there in the past for next nothing.

Aldi steaks are about the best too imo

i have a waitrose near my work so i do pretty much all my grocery shopping there, i dont think its too bad as far as cost... but thats probably cuz i get the cheaper stuff. i think its just that they give you the option to get all that fancy shit which you cant get in tesco

also i trust their meat + fish section more than tesco

My regular shop is Morrisons - OK quality, close, decent prices – but Waitrose the winner for me, will visit for fancy stuff once every couple of weeks, & less shitty to suppliers, staff etc than the other big ones afaik. (but I've done a lot of work for their mag, so idk maybe i've just swallowed the propaganda).

Minor defence of Iceland (just because there's one almost on my doorstep) - decent cheap freezer emergency food - their potato products have often been salvation when getting in drunk. (Though there was a funny period a couple of years ago when food journalists were telling me, 'Actually, Iceland's quite good. They use good fresh vegetables.' - I just assumed that was because Iceland had a good PR, because said journalists had clearly never seen the inside of an Iceland)

That's what I usually get. Co-op own brand is a lacklustre but tolerable substitute, as is Aldi's iirc though it's been a while. I think the M&S one even cost more than Colman's would have.

Christmas food seemed really expensive this year. Not just at M&S/Waitrose (not surprising) but even the Co-op had fridges full of "luxury" xmas everythings for way more than I could justify spending. I spent the post-Christmas week returning sporadically to eye the reduced to clear fridge but no luck.

(I too went to M&S to ogle Christmas things and buy small boxes of chocolates for random acquaintance gifts, but even the latter were more than I remembered from previous years. Was amused by the little chocolate balls wrapped up like "sprouts" though and bought some for acquaintances who are easily entertained like me.)

asda stuff was good

ya i shopped up in the six counties whit av ut

I got some half price mixed/stuffed olives for £1.65 at the local co-op. Nice accompaniment to my last dregs of whisky.

The m+s in this shithole was closed down 10 years ago. It had been there since the 1930's as well, somehow. The Jack Fulton's around the corner always had at least 100% more customers. Christ, even Woolworths usually had more customers.

Jack Fulton's does a tasty bargain now and then if you keep your eye on them

Just learned Aldi owns Trader Joe's in the US, never knew.

My nearest shops are Waitrose and Sainsbury's, supplemented by the amazing butcher on Theobald's Road and a couple of good fruit and veg stands. My upstairs neighbour runs the big one on Kingsway that's great for cheap fruit and £1 bunches of asparagus in season. The other is the Asian stall outside Marchmont Street post office with good 50p bunches of parsley and coriander.

I got 15p change this morning despite paying with my card. How does that work?

Did you bring your own bags? I've heard of some places giving you money back if you reuse old bags.

how the fuck did waitrose win this?

lol ilx

I would have to travel halfway to Bradford or to the t'other side of Leeds to find my nearest Waitrose. But I will say their own brand products which I often purchase from Ocado are decent. I could imagine after 5-6 more years of austerity much more of the squeezed middle of ILX would have realised LIDL is ace for cheap fresh produce and booze and their bakery products are rather good as well, Alan.

Co-op are underrated imo.

my parents are middle-class and retired and they do half their shopping in lidl and the other half in m&s food. the two shops are conveniently a stonesthrow from each other. i was legit impressed at the prices in lidl last time i was there. "22p for a tin of tomatoes wtf" sort of thing

I live in between (sort of) a Waitrose and a Morrisons, the novelty of Waitrose has long since worn off for me though and you'll invariably find me in Morrisons.

... the novelty of seeing Charles Dance doing his weekly shop, for one.

xxp co-op?? Their fruit and veg is always the worst where I am - have had mouldy herbs etc. And mostly overpriced except for the offers on big brands. There are about 4 of varying sizes on my nearby high street and I find them all infuriating

where i am the local co-op is pretty ace for fresh produce, and basics like tinned tomatoes, passsata, cream and minced beef etc. The local Asian supermarket is better, but double the walk.

I bet Charles Dance doesn't ever buy any reduced asparagus - the posh twat!

Co-op are underrated imo.

― calzino, Friday, 26 May 2017 20:55 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

co-op has this problem where quality is unknowable, I had "posh" chilled pizzas from there that were ineptly bady. Once had a frozen margarita that was oddly delicious, but the other frozen pizzas in the same line were completely disgusting, miserable smear of odd tasting orange tomato sauce. also, often very expensive. not waitrose expensive though.

Do any of you savages actually cook anything other than readymeals? As the resident council estate scratter I'm getting worried!

I've just been to the local Co-op. They are selling succulent looking 230g packs of Dutch vine tomatoes for 69p. I'll really miss offers like that in the post-Brexit depression.

Fruit and veg in my local Co-op is perversely expensive. You can currently get a pizza, wedges, garlic bread, frozen corn and ice cream for the price of 12 apples. The bakery is decent and the three-for-£1 Magnum dupes are amazing though.

For all the ethical positioning, the staff at my local one are vocal about hating it and say their benefits / perks are being stripped down. They are also moving towards only selling British meat to capitalise on Brexit sent, which is nagl.

https://s14.postimg.org/m9t9kqva9/IMG_0084.jpg

My other half wants to boycott them over this, not unreasonably. I can't bring myself to go to CostCutter instead tho.

I hadn't noticed the UKIP style marketing tbh.

I just got tomatoes, bell peppers, bananas, asparagus, double cream, passata, tinned tomatoes and a loaf of wholemeal bread. It came to £11 odd, that probably is a few quid more expensive than the same would cost at the Asian supermarket.

I don't believe all the ethical trade posturing for a minute. The staff do generally seem miserable as fuck, but at least they don't look at you like your an alien if you ask if they sell ginger, as happened in the local One-Stop.

went to big tescos this morning. can manage about 3 months at a time with the local small sainsburys but i do need things only the big tescos stocks from time to time (vitamin tablets, the shampoo i like, the good veggie soap that smells of lemons...)

anyway, sainsburys have prices and then big red stickers with sales prices on them.

tescos now have prices and then big yellow stickers with the *club card* prices on them. very easy to pick something up thinking it's on sale only to have to pay the higher price because i don't have a clubcard (actually, it wasn't obvious to me whether they were clubcard prices or clubcard PLUS prices, their paid discount card thing). there's now a two- or three-layer pricing system in tescos and it's ruined the whole thing for me.

(also, no skimmed milk in anything other than 4-pint bottles. i've noticed this other places too, that skimmed milk is becoming less favoured)

Totally agree. It makes forgetting your clubcard like a punishment. 'Here's what you could have got...'

I always keep a few bottles of skimmed milk in my stores and prefer it sometimes tbh. It's fine for making macaroni cheese and if full fat milk is even slightly going off I can't abide the taste of it.

I live in between (sort of) a Waitrose and a Morrisons, the novelty of Waitrose has long since worn off for me though and you'll invariably find me in Morrisons.

There's now an Aldi (or is it Lidl?) almost beside Morrisons. I've only been in it once because it opened at the height of the pandemic and the queues to get into it were horrendous. I know people swear by them but I didn't like it. Just checked, it's a Lidl.

when I lived in Ely there was a Waitrose opposite an Iceland, very different customer bases, Waitrose was good there because they would heavily discount soon-to-expire food and all the people in there were too well-off to be looking for it.
In Cambridge Waitrose there are masses of boho hippies who go straight for the discounts, so no point going.

Well, yes, I've only ever shopped in Waitrose for discount items, except when they were selling potato farls (or potato scones, as we call them).

brief trot to tesco because i had to go the other direction but didn't want to go to the faraway sainsburys... and the 4 self-service tills have been replaced with 8 self-service tills in the same space, meaning each has just enough space for a basket in front of it. so you scan your purchases and then there's nowhere to put them. back in the same basket? on the floor?

baking potatoes were 3.5 times as much as the sainburys ones. they'd better be 3.5 times better.

still livid about waitrose

twice in a little over a week I've scanned something and the price was more than the one on the shelf. and when i pointed this out they treat it like it's something I've done.

their solution is to remove the sticker from the shelf so now nobody knows what the thing will cost.

On the rare occasions I go to the supermarket in person, I'm astounded by Dunnes Stores' decision to introduce a delay into the checkout process. They do a coupon for €10 off your next shop with every €50 you spend, so the checkout line often has someone trying to make their shop up to a multiple of €50 so that they'll get the coupon. And sometimes they will LEAVE THE CHECKOUT and go back into the shop to get an extra loaf of bread or a couple of pizzas out of the freezer or something, instead of choosing batteries or gum from the rack right beside them, as God intended. It's so annoying. Sometimes you want to offer them the €10 so that they'll just pay up and piss off.