Supermarkets - all changing
Discussion
HTP99 said:
We used to have food delivered as I absolutely hated doing the weekly/fortnightly shop in Sainsbury's as it would literally kill an evening, it would take 2 hours and then once home it would be another hour or so to pack away (but then I think that was more to do with the wife making an easy job quite hard)
Wrong thread... You want -> https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...HTP99 said:
I was in JS today and I reckon their "World Foods" aisle alone would take up a third of the whole of the Aldi, situated a few hundred yards away, great if you like the convenience of packet sauces but I just don't need that, I can make pretty much all they have on offer with bits in my cupboard and the added bonus is there are no additives or crap in my sauces.
But the world food aisle is where the good spices and big bags of rice and all the other "proper ingredients" are. And they're all missing from the Aldidl twins. Mind you, having said that, our nearest Sainsbury's didn't even have cous cous in the other day - let alone bulghar wheat or freekeh. Back to the market, then.Zod said:
crankedup said:
Zod said:
Physically visiting the supermarket is in the past for me.
Not sure how to reply to that! Can't visit? Don't need to visit? Partner loves shopping? Have scurfs to shop for you? Grow your own? Click delivery. TooMany2cvs said:
But the world food aisle is where the good spices and big bags of rice and all the other "proper ingredients" are. And they're all missing from the Aldidl twins. Mind you, having said that, our nearest Sainsbury's didn't even have cous cous in the other day - let alone bulghar wheat or freekeh. Back to the market, then.
Sainsburys restocking of shelves does seem to be fairly poor. Their poor supply chain always used to be cited as one of the main reasons why Tesco used to outperform them.Europa1 said:
TooMany2cvs said:
But the world food aisle is where the good spices and big bags of rice and all the other "proper ingredients" are. And they're all missing from the Aldidl twins. Mind you, having said that, our nearest Sainsbury's didn't even have cous cous in the other day - let alone bulghar wheat or freekeh. Back to the market, then.
Sainsburys restocking of shelves does seem to be fairly poor. Their poor supply chain always used to be cited as one of the main reasons why Tesco used to outperform them.crankedup said:
Europa1 said:
crankedup said:
Not sure how to reply to that! Can't visit? Don't need to visit? Partner loves shopping? Have scurfs to shop for you? Grow your own? Click delivery.
Not sure you meant "scurfs". 
Samcat said:
We converted to Aldi about 18months ago, and we are now saving £90 a week even with a 'top-up' shop for a few branded items at Sainsbury's.
There is nothing wrong with the quality of zee German discounter, and I think in some cases the products are better then Tesco's et al.
You're right about the 'only sells what you need' stock, but that is what saves you money.
I've also noticed that we throw less stuff away now as well, as I suppose its because we are buying less impulse purchases
Just my experience.
Agreed 100% - All i would add is the Fruit and Veg never seems that fresh so we go to Waitrose for this once a week There is nothing wrong with the quality of zee German discounter, and I think in some cases the products are better then Tesco's et al.
You're right about the 'only sells what you need' stock, but that is what saves you money.
I've also noticed that we throw less stuff away now as well, as I suppose its because we are buying less impulse purchases
Just my experience.
Aldi & Lidl typically stock around 2.5-3k unique SKUs whereas the big four are more like 32-35k. The square footage means that there will always be more choice but Tesco's project reset hasn't done them any harm and they've managed to cull thousands of lines.
JS are going on a similar mission as they look to assimilate Argos & Habitat concessions along with value-added sushi and juice bars into their stores with space created by cutting duplication. In most categories, 70%+ of sales come from the top two or three variants which is invariably the range that the discounters will stock. Strawberry, peach and raspberry yoghurts; cheese and pepperoni pizzas; cola, lemonade, orangeade.
As the top four look to reduce the range that they're stocking I hope that this doesn't come entirely at the expense of choice. If there are two tiers of own label and a brand available on passion fruit and guava yoghurt, that's clearly not the best use of space but retaining one variant (probably the top tier) would keep the option in store and probably improve availability as all volume would move onto one SKU making it easier to meet minimum order quantities on slow-moving, short coded stock.
Regarding the checkout procedures, the German discounters run their stores on skeleton staff and have large barcodes on all sides of the packaging to make the process as cheap and fast as possible. They also take a lot of products in mixed outers which decant straight onto the basic fixtures, cutting down on staff hours required for merchandising.
With these lower overheads they can typically operate off a c.20% gross retail margin whereas the big four tend to be somewhere in the region of double that percentage so even though they may get slightly better volume-driven pricing than the discounters, their headline retails struggle to compete.
JS are going on a similar mission as they look to assimilate Argos & Habitat concessions along with value-added sushi and juice bars into their stores with space created by cutting duplication. In most categories, 70%+ of sales come from the top two or three variants which is invariably the range that the discounters will stock. Strawberry, peach and raspberry yoghurts; cheese and pepperoni pizzas; cola, lemonade, orangeade.
As the top four look to reduce the range that they're stocking I hope that this doesn't come entirely at the expense of choice. If there are two tiers of own label and a brand available on passion fruit and guava yoghurt, that's clearly not the best use of space but retaining one variant (probably the top tier) would keep the option in store and probably improve availability as all volume would move onto one SKU making it easier to meet minimum order quantities on slow-moving, short coded stock.
Regarding the checkout procedures, the German discounters run their stores on skeleton staff and have large barcodes on all sides of the packaging to make the process as cheap and fast as possible. They also take a lot of products in mixed outers which decant straight onto the basic fixtures, cutting down on staff hours required for merchandising.
With these lower overheads they can typically operate off a c.20% gross retail margin whereas the big four tend to be somewhere in the region of double that percentage so even though they may get slightly better volume-driven pricing than the discounters, their headline retails struggle to compete.
Hated the Tesco when I lived in Saffron Walden and would just sit in the car while my wife did the shopping. The Waitrose in town was quite small and limited.
Got quite excited when Aldi opened and would wander round picking things up, but it just got dull quite quickly and would just sit in the car reading stuff on my phone.
Back in London again and love going to the big Tesco in the High Road, always interesting stuff and you always manage to chat to somebody or other. Staff are cheeful and helpful too.
Got quite excited when Aldi opened and would wander round picking things up, but it just got dull quite quickly and would just sit in the car reading stuff on my phone.
Back in London again and love going to the big Tesco in the High Road, always interesting stuff and you always manage to chat to somebody or other. Staff are cheeful and helpful too.
HTP99 said:
The problem with the big supermarkets is choice; there is far too much,
I'm being a bit snobbish here, but we called in to an Asda/Walmart superstore at Huyton, a pretty rough area outside Liverpool, while passing one time and my wife sent me off to find Tartar Sauce and I was staggered by the choice they had - not only of that, but of every other similar product.I presume they only stock what sells, but it's hard to imagine the people in that area are discerning enough to need a massive selection of such items.
I think all these people that are praising their "high quality" food are either blind, have no taste buds or never bought any fruit and veg from them. The "fresh" fruit and veg choice ranges from 'completely rotten', 'slightly rotten' to 'will be rotten by the time you've arrived home'. I've always thought the fresh fruit and veg quality was poor at the big names (Morrisons being the exception) but Aldi and Lidl's is on a whole different level.
crankedup said:
Zod said:
Physically visiting the supermarket is in the past for me.
Not sure how to reply to that! Can't visit? Don't need to visit? Partner loves shopping? Have scurfs to shop for you? Grow your own? Click delivery. Edited by Cotty on Tuesday 27th June 14:02
TooMany2cvs said:
But the world food aisle is where the good spices and big bags of rice and all the other "proper ingredients" are. And they're all missing from the Aldidl twins. Mind you, having said that, our nearest Sainsbury's didn't even have cous cous in the other day - let alone bulghar wheat or freekeh. Back to the market, then.
Not in my JS; the "World Food" aisle is packet sauces; Indian, Mexican, Chinese Italian etc the vast majority of which I can make from scratch, spices is a separate aisle elsewhere as is rice.I do use JS for herbs and spices though and I bought risotto rice from JS earlier on today, but I don't expect to see it on sale at Aldi.
Edited by HTP99 on Tuesday 27th June 13:46
This may read as really desparate, the best place for steaks we have found is Icelands. Wife presented me with some ( cooked 
as a mixed grill thing, the steak was superb. I asked where it had come from, other than the cow, Icelands. We always buy the steak from them now. As good as any individual butcher shop! Surprising.
as a mixed grill thing, the steak was superb. I asked where it had come from, other than the cow, Icelands. We always buy the steak from them now. As good as any individual butcher shop! Surprising.NoIP said:
I think all these people that are praising their "high quality" food are either blind, have no taste buds or never bought any fruit and veg from them. The "fresh" fruit and veg choice ranges from 'completely rotten', 'slightly rotten' to 'will be rotten by the time you've arrived home'. I've always thought the fresh fruit and veg quality was poor at the big names (Morrisons being the exception) but Aldi and Lidl's is on a whole different level.
Interesting you mention the fruit and veg at Morrisons. That's where I usually shop, purely on the basis that it is the closest to me. I do pop in to some of the others on occasion if more convenient at the time and have found the F&V to be poor in comparison to Morrisons. Just figured I'd got unlucky, but sounds like Morrisons are just better than the competition when it comes to those products.hyphen said:
Why do you object to self checkouts?
I object to self checkouts because if I use one, I'm enabling the company to make a person redundant.People may not consider checkout work to be that great but compared to sitting at home on the social, it's a great job. It's also a lot more sociable than a machine and CCTV cameras, if shops move over to them completely or make the real checkout queues too long I'll just shop elsewhere.
It's part of the insidious march for profits over people which is undermining both our economy and society.
I sound like Kenneth Cope now LOL.
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morgs_ said:
Interesting you mention the fruit and veg at Morrisons. That's where I usually shop, purely on the basis that it is the closest to me. I do pop in to some of the others on occasion if more convenient at the time and have found the F&V to be poor in comparison to Morrisons. Just figured I'd got unlucky, but sounds like Morrisons are just better than the competition when it comes to those products.
"The Market" is one of Morrisons' main attractions if you can call it that. It's always heavily promoted in any ads they run and rightly so because it's one of the things they do very well imo. Their fruit and veg is better quality than any of the greengrocers within a 5 mile radius of me and is nearly always cheaper too. It's just a pity that the rest of Morrisons' stores are completely filled with cakes and sweets, cakes and sweets and more cakes and sweets. If you like fruit and cake, then Morrisons is like all your birthdays and Christmas's have come at once .NoIP said:
"The Market" is one of Morrisons' main attractions if you can call it that. It's always heavily promoted in any ads they run and rightly so because it's one of the things they do very well imo. Their fruit and veg is better quality than any of the greengrocers within a 5 mile radius of me and is nearly always cheaper too. It's just a pity that the rest of Morrisons' stores are completely filled with cakes and sweets, cakes and sweets and more cakes and sweets. If you like fruit and cake, then Morrisons is like all your birthdays and Christmas's have come at once .
Mmmm, their doughnuts are ace .
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