The UK and Ireland Supermarkets Poll

Been to a few Centras in Northern Ireland, it's a chain of corner shops and metro-sized minimarts similar to Spar, I guess? Not sure if NI Centra is the same company as the ROI Centra. And the Dunnes in Belfast is a big M&Sish department store which I didn't even realise had a food hall. We have a lot of Dunnes towels which have been pleasingly soft but durable, if that helps.

I don't really like where Waitrose has placed itself in the market spectrum (there isn't one anywhere near us but the last time I went to one some of the prices were crazy - this one was in a well-to-do twee market town though), but the Waitrose/John Lewis group is a workers' co-operative and seems to have started out with good intentions at least

though that thing abt the Co-op underpaying farmers is depressing if true, I have a Tesco Metro and a Co-Op opposite me and thought the Co-Op was a more ethical place to shop, but maybe that is totally misplaced

Got to know Booths for the first time on holiday in the Lake District last couple of weeks, with only a Co-op with no parking spaces as an alternative (no alternative): I've never been so completely and professionally stripped naked, robbed of my cash in a humiliating way. They joyously overcharge a bottle of wine you get at an off-license - or any other store in the world - for three, four quid less. Pricing of fresh fish and simple things like milk or bacon too seemed ridiculous. I won't even get into *paying* having to park at their lot (this was touristy Keswick, but still). Bloody Nora.

This was my experience too, and it basically sucked all the soul out of me in the middle of what was otherwise a lovely weekend camping in the Lake District. We figured since we'd been suckered into paying for parking we might as well get a coffee in their cafe while we were there. I can't even think of anything that even comes within a million miles of being the worst coffee I've ever had in my life.

I overuse Tesco due to convenience (also ridiculous amounts of yellow-stickered bargains in our local one), but try to use Morrisons and Sainsburys whenever I'm nearer one of them as I much prefer them.

Our wee Londis down the end of the road is good for the odd bargain, decent bottles of wine and fresh morning rolls.

I used to do my fruit and veg shopping in Lidl, but I tend to just use Tesco now. We get everything reduced anyway, as no-one in our wee suburb of Glasgow eats fruit and veg so it's always going cheap.

Oh yeah, them yellow stickers...

The fam was up north a couple weeks ago, and during these times I usually check out the bargs.

One week, my evening meals at home (4 nights) came to a grand total of £2.34 which was a bunch of fish, some salads, a burrito easymeal, and milk(Fullprice)..

Basically the only supermarket in my vicinity is a Tesco and it's one the worst examples i've ever seen. I do shop quite a bit in Aldi/Lidl when venturing further afield.

The 4 supermarkets within on-foot grocery-lugging distance of me:

an Aldi - good for brand-x snacks, sauces, cured meats and chocolate - lots of fresh veg too but I don't buy fresh anything here after some unwashably insect-covered broccoli
(to me Aldi and Lidl are almost interchangeable, but apparently Aldi has a v good reputation and Lidl a v bad one in Germany?)

an Iceland - mainly frozen ready meals and always full of OAPs and wailing children, but the small non-frozen section is often the cheapest place for everyday branded products (soap, household products, lager, Heinz tins, bread, crisp multipacks)

a Co-op - my main choice, but slightly odd combination of the organic/whole-food/expensive Waitrose market for some stock and the bare basics for others makes it hard to guess if they'll have the product you want or how expensive it'll be

a Tesco Metro - the stock is OK and prices are good but always v understaffed, you always have to use the self-checkout because the tills are rarely staffed, and other obvious cost-cutting measures like the thinnest bags ever

we also occasionally drive to:
a big out-of-town Sainsbury's (range and prices OK, food is usually good, experience is about as non-stressful as a giant out-of-town shop can be)
a big out-of-town Tesco's (this shop is a scrum and reduces me to an angry wreck every time, so many people driving trolleys like they can't even see you, like nothing must stand between them and the groceries)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Tie!

I know it is lazy observational comedy at its very lamest, but that Tesco "unexpected item in bagging area" voice makes me want to stab people. Except there are never any people around except the very large queue growing behind you and laughing as you keep removing the offending handbag/single banana that's fallen off the bunch or whatever and failing to find anywhere that the stupid automated voice woman will let you put it.

anyone ever get any of the heston stuff from waitrose? normally i cook but today was 99p for two veal burgers with "all the ingredients of tartare sauce", so kind of flavoured with cornichons, anchovies etc...i came here to say how great they were!

might be 3 quid normally...

you just waived your right to survive the revolution

f u i am reading beckett and behan at the moment and i love guinness

your executors will be reading kavanagh and o'casey and will be sthrong men for the pint of harp

Feel like this whole thread has been a proxy 'what class are you?' poll. (thanks for tip re burgers)

I went into my first Booths yesterday (Milnthorpe). - they have a juicing machine where you can do your own orange juice and bottle it up

Keep seeing Dunnes Stores bags around Russia. Having investigated it looks like there are off-brand versions too:

http://i.imgur.com/U6CBYyv.jpg

http://www.rte.ie/presspack/files/2012/08/CLOCH-LE-CARN-JOE-LYNCH-RTE-2310_004.jpg

In the absence of a tartare sauce thread (that I could find) I shall report here that M&S own-brand tartare sauce tastes mainly of vinegar with a hint of marker pens

in case that sounds delicious, it was not

mmmm!
I did sort of miss my M&S staple foods this year. More than offset by not having to cook anything.

two or three times in the last month i've popped into Marks's to ogle their Christmas food and then walked out thinking "i'm not paying THAT"

Colman's tartare sauce is pretty good.

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).