Dear Morrison (but Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury, you might as well pay attention so I don’t have to talk to you separately),
I am just recovering from a visit to one of your shops and a few things puzzle me.
Why is it necessary to have so many types of everything? I’m all for choice, but this is getting silly. Red grapes, for example, savers ones more or less the same price as regular ones, regular ones, posh ones and other own-brand ones whose price I couldn’t work out because they were in a different sized box oh, and, help yourself grapes in plastic strangle the hedgehogs mesh bags at some other bewildering rate.
Why do you scatter produce around so it appears in several places? Bagels, for instance, on a trippy up stand beside the potatoes, then next to the rustic bread and again opposite sliced and above rolls. Dried fruit likewise – next to wet fruit, in baking, beside cereals (healthy snacking!) and round the corner from crisps. This makes price comparisons almost impossible unless I scuttle back and forth across the shop.
Would it be possible have a simple way of comparing the price of your products – in one place – please?
What is compost doing next to potatoes? I know they share digs (geddit) in the garden, but not, surely, in a shop.
What, pray tell, is a crispmelt? And why, when there is evidently so much choice in your emporium do you need to make food up?
Why does shopping in your fast lanes invariably take longer than the ordinary checkouts and why, as you need fewer staff to work this don’t we get a discount?
Why would anyone want rice cakes that taste of barbeques? Or salt and vinegar? Or caramel? Or pepper? Or chilli? And why didn’t you have any ones that taste of rice cake?
If I opt to Eat Smart, does that mean if I choose one of your other ranges, by default, I’m eating stupid?
If I’m eating stupid, and I probably am, is it still right for you to treat me like I’m shopping stupid?
I think next time I’ll stay at home and use something like mysupermarket.co.uk that works it out for me. What’s that? You’re not on that. Oh dear…
Yours etc
Ellen
PS Is there really a market for a mini-tomato selection box?
Tweet
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);
Oh that is SO true about scattering things in different places. Drives me nuts. I have JUST discovered online shopping. Always eschewed it before as I thought I would hate not being able to peruse the aisles but you know what, it's so much better NOT having the choice. Just key in what you want, select 'special offers' and add to basket. Worth a fiver of anyone's money!
It is much better not having that choice. IT's one of the reasons I like Lidl and Aldi – only one of everything.
All in the aid of helping you spend more, more, more. A very old game of precise marketing product placement! Keep seeing it, eventually you will think you need it and in the basket it goes….grrr
Hate supermarkets with a passion, souless mega corporations that asre sucking individuality out of everyone they serve (ha…serve!!…if only!) and at the same time squeezing our farmers and producers slowly to death. No one should have that much power, its about time they were broken up like the banks are begining to be!
It's amazing isn't it.
I'm now craving a mini-tomato selection box – I don't think the post has had the desired effect..
But where next – onion selection boxes, radishes or carrots?
I'll whisper it, but I think you might be turning into your mother! A smallish supermarket with not too much choice, mostly locally sourced meat and veg, not too many aisles or display cabinets so high that you feel you are imprisoned in a maze, a car park in very easy reach of the entrance……..Reader, I've found it in my home town!
Yes mother. And is, by any chance, this comment brought to us courtesy of Booth's of Penrith? Sadly we don't have anything like it anywhere near.