If all of the supermarket chains in the UK except for Aldi and Lidl disappeared, would you care?

Bletchleyite said:

I do find the basket policy to be beyond bizarre. If they think people will nick them, put a security tag on them.

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They started allowing it here. Mind you, it's not in the too distant past that there weren't baskets at all!

175mph said:

I would have thought that because of the overheads of running a brick and mortar store, especially a supermarket, the online prices would be cheaper?

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The Big 4 pick most of their online orders in bricks and mortar stores for the following reasons:

- the bricks and mortar stores already exist due to history of how they've developed
- as sales have declined in traditional stores adding an online picking operation adds 'scale' to the store so helps to manage volume throughput, aiding efficiency (think date codes etc.)

Online orders are more expensive for supermarkets as the orders have to be picked by a member of staff and delivered to the customers home, so there are vehicle leasing and operating costs and driver costs. That's before we start talking about website costs, ordering platform IT development and costs, picking equipment etc.

Darandio said:

They started allowing it here. Mind you, it's not in the too distant past that there weren't baskets at all!

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I suppose they may have failed to appreciate that baskets aren't only used when you have 4 or 5 items, but that some of us load them piled up with maybe well over 10-15kg of stuff which takes too long to put in a bag at the checkout.

Techniquest said:

No no, we have night staff in to replen still. The jury is out amongst us lot whether it's worth being open all night, outside peak shopping season anyway.

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A Tesco Extra near to somewhere I work is open 24 hours. I happened to visit most nights at about 2am during one recent week (oh, the glamour), and out of curiosity I regularly counted 40 odd cars in the car park, sometimes more. I'd say each aisle had at least a couple of shoppers in it, and the sandwich/snacks aisle was particularly busy with shift workers like myself. It's not like it's the only 24 hour place to get food in the area in question, either.

tsr said:

A Tesco Extra near to somewhere I work is open 24 hours. I happened to visit most nights at about 2am during one recent week (the glamour), and out of curiosity I regularly counted 40 odd cars in the car park, sometimes more. I'd say each aisle had at least a couple of shoppers in it, and the sandwich/snacks aisle was particularly busy with shift workers like myself. It's not like it's the only 24 hour place to get food in the area in question, either.

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I suppose the issue for the supermarket is the question as to whether opening 24 hours actually does add enough customers (or steal enough off a competitor) to pay for those 2 members of staff (or thereabouts), or if all it does is spread out the hours that the same customers shop at - i.e. would those shift workers go and pick up a butty and a packet of crisps before their shift instead if it closed at say midnight, or would the custom actually be lost as, for example, they might instead choose to make one at home from items purchased from a different supermarket.

Bletchleyite said:

I do find the basket policy to be beyond bizarre. If they think people will nick them, put a security tag on them.

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My suspicion is that it is to save costs. All baskets at the tills = easy to move back to the entrance. Baskets loose all-over the packing area would take longer to assemble and take to the entrance.

I use my local Tesco at 'unsocial' hours very occasionally. There tends to be a few customers in, but not great numbers.

When I had an evening bus service, it was convenient after a day out (or holiday) by train to catch the bus from the station to Tesco, do a shop for essentials, then walk home. Better than having to remember en-route and then carry it in addition to other stuff.

When I defrost the freezer, it is quite convenient to re-stock late at night, especially in hot weather.

Neither of the above can be done at Aldidl, high street shops, or traditional markets.

Were the worst to happen, and my Tesco close, it would increase my grocery costs by £4 to £12 per week due to having to catch the bus to my next nearest largeish supermarket (also Tesco), although various mini-marts at within walking distance for some items.

Bletchleyite said:

I suppose the issue for the supermarket is the question as to whether opening 24 hours actually does add enough customers (or steal enough off a competitor) to pay for those 2 members of staff (or thereabouts), or if all it does is spread out the hours that the same customers shop at - i.e. would those shift workers go and pick up a butty and a packet of crisps before their shift instead if it closed at say midnight, or would the custom actually be lost as, for example, they might instead choose to make one at home from items purchased from a different supermarket.

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I know Asda ended 24 hour opening for some of their stores too, such as Newark Upon Trent, but they don't seem to have done it anywhere near as much as what Tesco appears to have done.

My local Tesco in Falkirk was open 24 hours a couple of years ago when I moved to Wales.

It is no longer 24 Hours but 6am to Midnight every day (including Sunday as there is no restriction up here on Sunday Trading Hours) as I discovered on my return.

There is another 24 Hour One in Redding a couple of miles away - and that is 24/7 every day including Sundays.

Butts said:

(including Sunday as there is no restriction up here on Sunday Trading Hours) as I discovered on my return.

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Those pesky Sunday Trading Hours. They caught me out when I was in Scarborough last year - tried to go to the Sainsburys round the corner from where I was staying at 5pm. That didn’t end well.

Butts said:

My local Tesco in Falkirk was open 24 hours a couple of years ago when I moved to Wales.

It is no longer 24 Hours but 6am to Midnight every day (including Sunday as there is no restriction up here on Sunday Trading Hours) as I discovered on my return.

There is another 24 Hour One in Redding a couple of miles away - and that is 24/7 every day including Sundays.

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I didn't even realise you had moved back, quite the nomadic existence. Was it the lure of cheap advances from Falkirk to destinations down the East Coast?

Darandio said:

I didn't even realise you had moved back, quite the nomadic existence. Was it the lure of cheap advances from Falkirk to destinations down the East Coast?

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No, I was deported

With regard to the cheap advances, they now seem to be as rare as an English or Welsh Supermarket open after 5pm on a Sunday

Bletchleyite said:

I do find the basket policy to be beyond bizarre. If they think people will nick them, put a security tag on them.

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Slightly off-topic, but there are some product lines they both sell:

B & Q won't let you take a basket past the tills either. They are fitted with security tags (the baskets, perhaps the staff as well) and the till staff have a standard line of 'you can't take baskets to the car park', to which I reply 'I don't want to take the basket to the car park, I have a bag here'. Some go all helpful and include 'I'll go and find you a trolley'.

Baxenden Bank said:

Slightly off-topic, but there are some product lines they both sell:

B & Q won't let you take a basket past the tills either. They are fitted with security tags (the baskets, perhaps the staff as well) and the till staff have a standard line of 'you can't take baskets to the car park', to which I reply 'I don't want to take the basket to the car park, I have a bag here'. Some go all helpful and include 'I'll go and find you a trolley'.

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Nor will most other places, but Aldi/Lidl specifically set their checkouts up so you don't pack at the checkout, so it's beyond bizarre that you have to break that policy (and so slow down the checkout) if you do use a basket.

Re baskets, last month I was in leafy Norfolk and popped into a Tescos. The baskets were fitted with security tags, which I have never seen anywhere. I mused that it was odd that it was seen as a requisite here but not back in inner London.

(As an aside - I have some odd habits... if I'm away from London but going back that day, I will often pick up shopping (non perishable) before setting off, or at some point on the way. Equally, I've had a week off work and gone away for a few days and whilst in, say, Bristol, been to a local branch of Screwfix to pick up bits for a diy job I'm planning when I get back. I could do it when I'm back home but often it fits in with other plans).

Bletchleyite said:

Nor will most other places, but Aldi/Lidl specifically set their checkouts up so you don't pack at the checkout, so it's beyond bizarre that you have to break that policy (and so slow down the checkout) if you do use a basket.

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Yes, I simply didn't think of it that way. Most places you simply wouldn't need or want to take the basket beyond the till. You pack there and then and what to do with the basket becomes the shops problem.

As for B & Q, their business model doesn't seem to anticipate pedestrian customers. Hence bulky/heavy items (bags of compost and topsoil in my case) not being transferred to a car boot. Every time they try to scan my personal sack trolley to sell it to me. Then I have to exit via the road because the pedestrian entrance is very indirect and totally overgrown.

Tom B said:

Re baskets, last month I was in leafy Norfolk and popped into a Tescos. The baskets were fitted with security tags, which I have never seen anywhere. I mused that it was odd that it was seen as a requisite here but not back in inner London.

(As an aside - I have some odd habits... if I'm away from London but going back that day, I will often pick up shopping (non perishable) before setting off, or at some point on the way. Equally, I've had a week off work and gone away for a few days and whilst in, say, Bristol, been to a local branch of Screwfix to pick up bits for a diy job I'm planning when I get back. I could do it when I'm back home but often it fits in with other plans).

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I’ve noticed my local Tesco now has same, so perhaps this is something being rolled out more widely. People taking baskets with them because they don’t want to pay for carrier bags?

bramling said:

I’ve noticed my local Tesco now has same, so perhaps this is something being rolled out more widely. People taking baskets with them because they don’t want to pay for carrier bags?

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I'm finding it harder and harder to actually lay my hands on a basket when I go to the shop these days, so maybe a lot of them have walked out the door.

On the other hand, when I worked for Iceland 80% of our trolleys disappeared in a 3 week period. In that case it was almost certainly a competitor trying to make us a difficult store to shop in, particularly since they all turned up at once one day, neatly stacked in a car park across town. Doing the same thing with baskets would be even easier.

takno said:

I'm finding it harder and harder to actually lay my hands on a basket when I go to the shop these days, so maybe a lot of them have walked out the door.

On the other hand, when I worked for Iceland 80% of our trolleys disappeared in a 3 week period. In that case it was almost certainly a competitor trying to make us a difficult store to shop in, particularly since they all turned up at once one day, neatly stacked in a car park across town. Doing the same thing with baskets would be even easier.

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I must admit that 99% of the time when doing my food shopping, Iceland gets overlooked by me.

takno said:

I'm finding it harder and harder to actually lay my hands on a basket when I go to the shop these days, so maybe a lot of them have walked out the door.

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I've noticed that for a while. Many supermarkets seem to take a lot of trouble to ensure that the trolleys are lined up at the store entrance, ready for people to grab, but make almost no attempt to ensure the baskets are easy to find. The cynic in me suspects that this may be connected to the likelihood that, if you have a trolley, you're more likely to buy more extra things that you weren't intending to buy because there's more space in the trolley and you can't feel the weight of what you've put in it as easily.

175mph said:

I must admit that 99% of the time when doing my food shopping, Iceland gets overlooked by me.

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Yeah I do the same if I'm honest, I haven't been in Iceland for ages despite my leisure time walks taking me past there most days.

As for baskets, when the carrier bag charge first started people actually were nicking the baskets to take home instead of buying a 5p bag. For ages we had security tags on baskets, which eventually got removed.

The best thing in Iceland is the 3 litre bottles of Vimto cordial which are the cheapest way to buy it.

sprunt said:

The best thing in Iceland is the 3 litre bottles of Vimto cordial which are the cheapest way to buy it.

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Same with Pepsi and a lot of other drinks.

LOL The Irony said:

Same with Pepsi and a lot of other drinks.

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Dont these big bottles go flat ?

route101 said:

Dont these big bottles go flat ?

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Not really.

route101 said:

Dont these big bottles go flat ?

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How would you tell? lol

Butts said:

Thirty years ago there were probably half the number of Supermarkets that exist today.

Everyone still managed to do their shopping so why is there such a proliferation of different stores now available ?

Perhaps there is to much choice !!

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In our town centre we used to have far more supermarkets. I remember at primary school in the 1980s we were doing a project and compared the prices of certain items in each of the town centre stores.
At that time we had within about 5 minute walk from each other
Sainsburys
Co-op
International Stores
Finefare
Bejam (now Iceland)
1 family run independent store (& off licence)

There were also 2 butchers, 3 greengrocers and a fishmonger. There was also an indoor market with more greengrocers/butchers counters.

Gradually these closed and Sainsburys moved to a a larger store on the edge of town around 1990. this eventually left Iceland as the only food store in the town centre plus one greengrocer - the butchers and fishmonger had both retired by then. The indoor market also closed.
About 5 years later Morrisons moved in and we now also have a Sainsbury local.

As I do not have a car I mainly use Morrisons as it is in the town centre about 10 minute walk from home.
There is a Lidl near Sainsbury but it is a 1.5 mile walk so I only went there once and couldn't find anything I wanted so have never been again. At the moment the nearest Aldi is 15 miles away.
I tend to visit Waitrose about once or twice a month if I am passing it for any reason to get some other items I can't get from Morrisons - usually use the branch near Kings Cross before getting the train home.

philjo said:

In our town centre we used to have far more supermarkets. I remember at primary school in the 1980s we were doing a project and compared the prices of certain items in each of the town centre stores.

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I remember doing that as a young kid and us almost getting thrown out of Kwik Save for doing it as they thought my Mum was someone from another shop trying to price-match and I was along as a decoy!

Butts said:

Thirty years ago there were probably half the number of Supermarkets that exist today.

Everyone still managed to do their shopping so why is there such a proliferation of different stores now available ?

Perhaps there is to much choice !!

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In the 70s there were shops on literally every street corner, plus shops in the High Streets. The street corner ones were usually privately owned, with the owners living above/behind. The High Street ones were generally larger, usually part of regional/local chains such as Lipmans, Redmans, etc but there were also privately owned independent stores in the High Street too.

So, people had plenty of choice - the street corner shops were varied, some would be sweet shops, some newsagents, some grocers, some greengrocers, some butchers, some bakers, some hardware, chemists, etc etc., usually there'd be clusters, i.e. 4 different stores on each corner of a cross roads and you'd also have parades where you'd have 3,4,5,6 different shops next to each other in a row often in the centre of a housing estate.

The High Streets were slightly different in that you'd have all that, plus specialist shops such as tailors, haberdashers, etc., and the food shops were usually bigger with more choice, more "special/rare" types of food, and be the early forerunners of today's "supermarket" as they'd sell groceries, plus butchery and/or bakery, off licence, etc.

It was the mid to late 70s when the "big" supermarkets started moving into town centres, i.e. Co-op, tesco, fine-fayre, Kwik-Save etc which initially displaced the Lipmans/Redmans breed of chain High St stores as they were bigger and cheaper, so the smaller regional chains couldn't compete. That was also the start of the end for the private corner style "open all hours" shops.

Then in the 80s-90s, the out of town supermarkets started to appear which continued the demise of the smaller/independent shops, but also started the demise of the town centre chain stores, i.e. Fine Fayre, Kwik-Saves, Co-Ops etc. including smaller branches of Tescos, etc.

So, it's been basically a 50 year evolution from corner shops and High Streets to the present day out of town superstores. Ironically, we're starting to see the green shoots of a recovery of the small, private, specialist shops, which in my opinion can only be a good thing and perhaps we'll get some real choice again in the next decade or two as the pendulum swings back away from superstores and back towards smaller stores. We can live in hope!

underbank said:

It was the mid to late 70s when the "big" supermarkets started moving into town centres, i.e. Co-op, tesco, fine-fayre, etc which initially displaced the Lipmans/Redmans breed of chain High St stores as they were bigger and cheaper, so the smaller regional chains couldn't compete. That was also the start of the end for the private corner style "open all hours" shops.

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Part of the problem with those shops is that most of them really weren't any good. It is possible to live only shopping at a Tesco Express or a Sainsbury's Local or whatever - they do carry all day to day goods, albeit only in one or two types per product (in an Aldi style manner) - even including "free from" stuff and the likes these days. It wasn't possible to do that with an old style corner shop - the one just up from me is fine for bread, milk and tinned stuff, but their range of meat, fruit and veg is barely existant and of poor quality.

You've also got the option of a bulk delivery once or twice a month plus top-ups from local stores - particularly fresh fruit/veg.

Obviously when it would have had a greengrocer, a baker and a butcher next to it that would have been workable, but minus those (which started to die much earlier) there was a period in the 1990s-2000s when you simply could not live locally unless you were lucky enough to have a superstore nearby. Now with the coming of the "mini supermarkets" you once again can - and those corner shops which want to survive are joining the likes of the Nisa buying group and improving so they are almost as good.