There is a secret to shopping at Tesco. If you have lost hope of ever finding any of those convenient trundle baskets; if you have time to cruise the aisles several times and prise open half a dozen misted cool cabinets, and if you are happy to be diverted by Sky News as you dither about which till has the longest wait, then every now and again you will get lucky. You might even arrive home with something tolerable for supper. The secret lies in low expectations.Ah. Clearly, that’s where I’m going wrong: my expectations are simply that they sell me stuff at prices I want to buy, when I want to buy it.
They seem to always meet them, too.
To many shoppers – and I exclude here members of the chattering classes, who were always rather sniffy about Tesco – the company’s decline has been evident for some time, at least for the two years that its market share has been falling. Shouty price wars concealed price rises.
The shopping experience – too few staff, inadequate hygiene, those self-service tills – left much to be desired.Perhaps viewing shopping as ‘an experience’ rather than as a necessary act to get foodstuffs is where you’re going wrong, Mary?
Anecdotally, it was obvious that many people shopped at Tesco for want of an alternative.I have lots of alternatives. Lidl, Morrisons, Aldi, Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose are all within a 25 minute drive.
But I still shop at Tesco quite a bit.
The problem for Tesco was that, where there was an alternative, its customers chose it, for all that it had a Teutonic tinge. Price was one consideration, but only one. In my experience, Aldi and Lidl offer a less frenetic atmosphere.
A more limited selection saves you time.Yes, that’s what I want when I go shopping, too – anti-choice. “No,” I cry, “Don’t give me too many options, I’m just a simple person, I want to have fewer decisions to make! The bog-standard fish fingers will do!”
Bring back the 50s, eh, Mary? You would have loved the Soviet Union.
All Britain’s big four supermarkets, not just Tesco, but Sainsbury’s Morrisons and Asda, have been losing market share. There are perils in massive expansion (yes, even for the upmarket, and so far resilient, Waitrose). And the pattern of British food shopping is changing: a few big shopping trips are being replaced with more smaller excursions, with a greater emphasis on quality. To blame Aldi and Lidl for the troubles of Tesco and others is to let complacent British supermarkets off the hook. The Germans deserve to be praised for offering a superior package, not stigmatised for their nationality.Amazing, the depths of self-hatred of the progressives even extends to our national supermarkets…
It used to be that a trip to the supermarket was an expedition of some distance and you did it less frequently and bought as much as possible all in one trip.
ReplyDeleteNowadays round here I pass a major supermarket within 5 miles whichever direction I take. Of course people do more smaller shops now because it's easier to get to the supermarket and less necessary to plan so far ahead.
Ocado.
ReplyDeleteExpressing the idea that a trip to the supermarket should be considered an 'experience' suggests that she has swallowed the advertising blurb hook, line and sinker.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that I've ever worried myself over the nationality of my supermarket, I usually shop at Asda which is now American owned I believe.
Stonyground
Please don't let me be in a supermarket at the same time as Mary! I am sure she parks her trolly obliquely across the middle of the aisle while contemplating the pasta shapes; at the fruit and veg section she blocks all approaches to the plastic bags; in the queue for the till she asks you to keep her place while she disappears....if you can't handle the choice do the bloody shop on line and let us decisive types handle the variety and convenience!
ReplyDeleteSocialist snobs are always reluctant to admit it, but it irks them no end that Tesco was founded by a Jewish barrow boy.
ReplyDeleteBunny
ReplyDeleteMr Hills could you possibly be suggesting that the 'Progressives' might be against social mobility? Surely not, I mean the privately educated Tony Crossland being against grammar schools was to help the lower orders surely....
This stupid Slavic sow might have shopped in Germany, but she doesn't seem to have lived there. German supermarkets suck, and so do most of the alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI’m just a simple person
Well, at least that much is right.
I wonder how the Guardian attracts writers of this calibre. I thought I had it, but when I Googled "vapid flange wanted", alas, there were no results.
Likewise "handwringing crybaby wanted" for their 'male' writers, although "niggers with attitude" fared very well indeed.
It's a chore made less boring by observing the contents of the trolleys of the grossly overweight. I sometimes chuck a salad item in when their backs are turned, as they grapple a mega-pack of crisps or sweet-fat-shit (fill in the details as you like: ice cream, cakes, etc.). I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they unpack at home - wazzat? Oo put 'kin salad in the trollay?
ReplyDeleteBunny
ReplyDeleteWith a face like a robber's dog, Dejevsky is clearly in favour of oral mobility. It's hard to imagine Rusbridger hiring the retard if she was looking up at him.
I shop at Lidl because there`s one 2 minutes walk from my house and I don't have a car, that they`re good value is a happy coincidence.
ReplyDeletenot rocket science is it? and as other commenters have said, I don't shop for the experience or the ambience, I shop for baked beans and eggs and toilet paper etc etc.....you get the picture,
I view shopping as I would view cleaning the toilet, just something to be done and got out of the way.
@Anan 1148:
ReplyDeleteI view shopping as I would view cleaning the toilet
As do I, albeit with a great deal more shit.
And at least the shit in my toilet doesn't try bumping into me when it's sending an SMS to Ayeesha or Tyrone on a benefits-funded iPhone.
XX for all that it had a Teutonic tinge.XX
ReplyDeleteHEJ! Hold up!
I have NEVER had anything to DO with Tesco!!
XX Aldi and Lidl offer a less frenetic atmosphere. XX
ReplyDeleteThis bitch was obviously nowhere near an Aldi or Lidl in Berlin last Thursday! (The day before a public holiday, when the whole country appears to think that food is never going to happen again, and all those "Sunday shopping trolly drivers" make life HEL!
@Furor
ReplyDeleteI think we have both been at the checkout at 1100 pm the 24th of December before.
The words 'manners' and 'politesse' cannot be translated into German. The sincere, thoughtful, decent, generous, kindly Germans, so many of them over the last thirty years, must have been British agents.
It was from a James Bond novel that I remember: "The German is at your feet or at your throat"
"Nowadays round here I pass a major supermarket within 5 miles whichever direction I take."
ReplyDeleteSnap! And regularly visiting them all nets the best bargains.
"Expressing the idea that a trip to the supermarket should be considered an 'experience' suggests that she has swallowed the advertising blurb hook, line and sinker."
Yup! It can be enjoyable, but a leisure pursuit? No.
"It's a chore made less boring by observing the contents of the trolleys of the grossly overweight. "
The lack of actual meal ingredients always astounds me. These people really don't cook.
"This bitch was obviously nowhere near an Aldi or Lidl in Berlin last Thursday! (The day before a public holiday, when the whole country appears to think that food is never going to happen again..."
ReplyDeleteSame thing happens here every Christmas, as Twenty_Rothmans attests!
AA Twenty_Rothmans said...
ReplyDeleteThe words 'manners' and 'politesse' cannot be translated into German. AA
Doch!
Umgangsformen, or Manieren, and, I presume you mean politeness(?), Höflichkeit (Politesse is a Traffic warden.)