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

Bletchleyite said:

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)

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We had a newsagents shop in a "cluster" from the mid 70s to mid 90s. Our cluster included a grocers, butchers, greengrocers, off licence, post office, bakers, chemist, hairdressers and wool/knitting shop at the entrance to a huge 1920s housing estate. Within the same housing estate were other shops, including a couple of other grocers, a couple of sweet shops, another newsagents, all just one-offs on random street corners. We bought the shop, I think around 1974, so that "model" of local shops was still very much with us up to the mid 70s at least. We didn't live at the shop, we lived in another area which was very similar. On a Saturday morning, you literally couldn't move on the pavements outside, each shop had a queue out of the door and people just went from shop to shop.

I'd say it was between the mid 70s and mid 80s that the rot set it as the chains started opening large stores in the town centres but still within the town centre not out of town. I remember the first we lost was the greengrocer and then a couple of years later we lost the bakers, and then the shops not in our cluster closed down one by one, leaving just our cluster. We all suffered drop in trade due to the town centre chain stores, but muddled on and we benefitted from gaining some trade from the other shops as they closed, i.e. we, as a newsagents, started selling wider range especially kid's sweets as the sweet shops had closed which made up for the loss of business we suffered to the High St chains. We all carried on until a huge out of town Asda opened up, in the late 1980s. That was the death knell. First to close was the butchers, and that caused a knock on effect due to loss of trade, the grocers was next as they lost business due to people not coming for the butchers next door, and so on. By 1995, we were the last man standing which was basically because of our home delivery paper rounds (one thing that the High Street stores and Asda don't do!) - the chemist and post office had closed because people didn't come to the butchers, grocers anymore! What was once a thriving and busy shopping cluster was then very quiet indeed. We couldn't carry on with just paper rounds, so we sold them to another newsagent and shut the shop. A couple of the cluster were converted to living accommodation, but the cluster now consists of a takeaway, an off licence, a tanning studio, a tattooist and a hairdresser/nail bar, so a pretty typical consist of today!

That sounds like the story of a similar cluster of shops near where I lived in Liverpool (Old Roan) until age 7ish. Interestingly, though, the cluster included a Kwik Save supermarket, which complemented the others because at the time supermarkets were for tinned and dry goods, they didn't really do any fresh stuff, so you'd go to the butcher, baker and greengrocer for those. (I just had a look on Google Maps and the former Kwik Save unit has now been split into several units including a Domino's Pizza).

It isn't just the supermarkets that caused it, though, changes in working patterns did. Up to about 1990 in most families only one parent worked, so the other could shop during the day - and most of the time, these small shops did a typical 9am-5:30pm Monday-Saturday day with Wednesday afternoon closure. That is no use whatsoever in a situation where both parents work (as you need to buy fresh goods more often than just on a Saturday morning, and you might be away on Saturday so that's then two weeks), and yet those small businesses weren't really willing to shift to something like a noon-8:30pm day which would have worked. Often they also closed for lunch so popping out from work didn't work.

So I think the supermarkets just came in and filled a slot which was otherwise not filled. In a way a bit like Starbucks which really created a new market for themselves that didn't really exist before (you only got sit-and-socialise type tea shops in tourist places before that).

Bletchleyite said:

yet those small businesses weren't really willing to shift to something like a noon-8:30pm day which would have worked. Often they also closed for lunch so popping out from work didn't work.

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That was usually because they didn't have staff. So the owner had to close to have their lunch and couldn't really work into the evenings if they've been open since the morning. Wednesday afternoons were usually when they went to the bank, accountant, wholesaler, etc. Corner shops basically paid their owner a wage, they wouldn't normally stretch to staff also, except maybe for the Saturday morning peak when they'd have school kids in. In our case, my Dad started at 6am and closed at 6pm, so an hour for lunch seems pretty reasonable, especially when that was 7 days per week! Me and my brother took turns to do a couple of hours before school and worked weekends and my Mum was a full time teacher, so not really involved at all. Very hard on my Dad and he dropped dead outside the shop one morning at 6am after 20 years of it!

But yes, it meant it was difficult for people working office/shop hours.

I live in a fairly small town, we have a Tesco, and recently an Aldi opened just down the road from me, and I do use it a lot for the basics. We did have a Morrisons, but that was awful, being as how it was used by a lot of the OAP's, they used to send some right rubbish over, fruit that would go off in a couple of days, meat that was full of fat, it was murder, in the end a lot of people stopped going there!
Sainsbury's is far too expensive, I remember their 'own brand' cola being dearer than Coke, figure that out! The annoying one for me is this 'wonky stuff', I was looking in Morrisons once, a pound of carrots was something like 30p, a pound of 'wonky' carrots was about 50p!, now correct me if I'm wrong here, but if something isn't up to scratch, isn't it normally cheaper, and how can you have 'wonky' veg, a carrot still tastes like a carrot, regardless of it's shape, a potato is still a potato, whether it's round, oval or square! What is it, an attempt to make more money by making gullible people feel better because they feel like they are saving the planet by buying 'wonky' veg?
I remember when you bought a bag of spuds and they were all shapes and sizes, you only complained if they were rotten, now it seems all veg has to be 'pretty', spuds a certain size, carrots a certain shape, banana's with a certain curve radius, I remember helping a mate fit a kitchen for a customer, the silly woman complained because there was an ever so slight shade difference between 2 of the cupboard doors!, She was the one who wanted oak, because it was a natural wood, and there's the key word, natural, anything natural will have slight differences, that's why some people are tall, os short, or fat, or thin, or have dark hair, or blonde hair, or ginger, because they are natural.

Phil-D said:

The annoying one for me is this 'wonky stuff', I was looking in Morrisons once, a pound of carrots was something like 30p, a pound of 'wonky' carrots was about 50p!, now correct me if I'm wrong here, but if something isn't up to scratch, isn't it normally cheaper, and how can you have 'wonky' veg, a carrot still tastes like a carrot, regardless of it's shape, a potato is still a potato, whether it's round, oval or square! What is it, an attempt to make more money by making gullible people feel better because they feel like they are saving the planet by buying 'wonky' veg?

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It's anything non-standard. It's all automated processes, so "normal" shaped carrots just go straight through the systems/machines and come out the other end, washed, graded, packaged, etc, with very little labour involved. The "wonky" ones will be rejected by the automated processes and will need manual intervention, i.e. someone to check, one by one, that they're fit to sell, they may need a different washing system if they're rejected before the washing process, different packaging, so a completely separate, more manual production line. Probably still cost more to sell them than dump them so they need to charge more just to cover costs, but these days, that's more politically correct avoids risking the adverse publicity of just dumping them and the resultant howls of protests.

underbank said:

That was usually because they didn't have staff. So the owner had to close to have their lunch and couldn't really work into the evenings if they've been open since the morning.

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But that's the attitude that resulted in them closing. It's a fairly typical view in UK small businesses, and while it's their right to do that, it in the end kills them when they won't adapt to the needs and wishes of their customers.

What I was suggesting is that as in the UK almost nobody goes shopping before work if they work a conventional 9-5:30 ish day, that it would make more sense that they opened from after lunch to early evening (say 8pm for the commuters). That would still only take one person to do, they would just work different times. And because the banks would presumably still do 9-5, they could bank etc in the mornings.

Newspaper shops are a bit different as people tended to want one in the morning, but a split shift (say opening 6am-1:30pm and again for a short period 4:30-7pm) might make more sense. Doesn't work for everyone, but I could cope with that with no commute (as owners of such shops tended to have).

I'm not saying shop owners shouldn't have a break, but closing for lunch when most other people go for lunch (i.e. between about 12 and about 1:30) is just a bit silly. If I ran such a business I'd take a late lunch, say 1:30-2:30, which would mean being there when most of my lunchtime customers would want me - but the attitude was simply not to consider that sort of thing in most cases.

Bletchleyite said:

But that's the attitude that resulted in them closing.

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No it isn't - it was supermarkets selling items at a lower price than the small business could buy them for, meaning small shops couldn't compete on price. Customers killed the corner shops by stopping using them. We lived through that time.

I remember we went to KwikSave every Saturday morning to buy convenience groceries to sell in the shop, such as tins of beans, corn flakes, tea and coffee, soups, etc - it was cheaper there than we could buy at the wholesalers. We did it to provide a service when the other shops were closed, i.e. early morning, Wednesday tea time, Sunday, etc.

In the early days before the big supermarkets took hold, we could buy direct from manufacturers, i.e. Cadbury, Rowntree etc for chocolate bars, easter eggs, etc., and Imperial tobacco etc for cigarettes and Standard for fireworks, etc - as the supermarkets got bigger, the big firms stopped dealing direct so we had no choice but to buy from wholesalers who obviously wanted their cut too! That was why small shop prices were more than supermarkets and why they lost custom. There was simply no way we could compete on price and customers are very price driven.

As for lunch hours, we weren't in a town, so we had no lunchtime trade anyway as there were no workplaces near us. The shop was basically dead between around 11-30 and 2-30 as we were in a housing estate, so an hour for lunch was no problem to us, nor any of the other shops in our estate. It was manically busy with workers going to work between 6 and 8, then school between 8-9, then quietened down to stay at home mums and OAPS mid morning, then started again mid afternoon with school finishing and finally workers coming home again. The opening hours mirrored the customer flows.

Do you really think that small shopkeepers didn't think about different hours? They opened when the customers came and closed when they didn't. A shop in a housing estate is a completely different beast from a shop on a High Street or near a school or near a big workplace. We stayed late on a Thursday evening waiting for the local newspaper to be delivered (usually around 8pm) - on a good day, we may have had 1 or 2 customers, most days, we had none at all during those two hours.

It's all about price.

underbank said:

It's all about price.

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But is it any more? Maybe you're right (you after all have more experience than me) - perhaps there was an interim period when it was only about that - but the "mini supermarkets" seem to do pretty well and their prices are marked up slightly from the main supermarket itself.

For me, the main market isn't for a tin of beans of a box of cornflakes any more, anyway - it's about a good selection of fresh stuff that goes off, I just get enough non-perishables delivered once a month by Tesco. But maybe that's the time-pressured not-quite-millennial of the 2010s talking, not the 1990s person? After all in the 80s and 90s we ate a lot more tinned and packeted food - these days it's hardly any due to wide availability of quality fresh stuff (which is in part because of the mini-supermarkets), good refrigeration and just in time delivery. Even for those who primarily eat ready meals (not me, but plenty of people do) those are typically refrigerated rarther than frozen.

It's almost like there's a perfect climate for a resurgence of the butcher, baker and proverbial candlestick maker...if rents were cheap enough! Though the newsagent (as a shop primarily selling papers, mags, fags and sweets, and maybe the odd bit of beans-and-bog-roll just in case) is probably gone long term as the former can be had online (or free on the train) and fags and sweets are increasingly deprecated.

Perhaps petrol stations are the place for this as electric cars roll out and petrol becomes less necessary?

Bletchleyite said:

But is it any more? Maybe you're right (you after all have more experience than me) - perhaps there was an interim period when it was only about that - but the "mini supermarkets" seem to do pretty well and their prices are marked up slightly from the main supermarket itself.

For me, the main market isn't for a tin of beans of a box of cornflakes any more, anyway - it's about a good selection of fresh stuff that goes off, I just get enough non-perishables delivered once a month by Tesco. But maybe that's the time-pressured not-quite-millennial of the 2010s talking, not the 1990s person? After all in the 80s and 90s we ate a lot more tinned and packeted food - these days it's hardly any due to wide availability of quality fresh stuff (which is in part because of the mini-supermarkets), good refrigeration and just in time delivery. Even for those who primarily eat ready meals (not me, but plenty of people do) those are typically refrigerated rarther than frozen.

It's almost like there's a perfect climate for a resurgence of the butcher, baker and proverbial candlestick maker...if rents were cheap enough! Though the newsagent (as a shop primarily selling papers, mags, fags and sweets, and maybe the odd bit of beans-and-bog-roll just in case) is probably gone long term as the former can be had online (or free on the train) and fags and sweets are increasingly deprecated.

Perhaps petrol stations are the place for this as electric cars roll out and petrol becomes less necessary?

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Yes, different era. People have more money these days and maybe aren't quite so price sensitive - they're short of time these days, not money. I remember in the 70s people would walk past and go to other shops that were selling things just a penny or two cheaper. There was also, ironically, more choice. Our shop sold Barrs soft drinks, the grocers next door sold Ben Shaw, grocers on the next street sold a local brand - same with bread, grocers next to us sold Homepride (I think), the one round the corner sold Warburtons, and we had a proper home-made bakery too. All within easy walking distance (and sight) of eachother.

Yes, I firmly believe we're on the cusp of a resurgence of smaller, specialist shops as seen we've the popularity of street markets etc. Rents are still ridiculously high in the High Street owned by pension schemes and property management companies but starting to fall rapidly for privately owned ones in the outskirts etc. There's even a place for newsagents who specialise in less popular newspapers (i.e. foreign ones) and more specialist magazines (i.e. the ones that supermarkets don't sell such as hobbies etc). We have a couple of newsagents in our town that are still doing very well, simply by selling things that the supermarkets don't which is of course why WH Smith still exists on the High St - still good money to be made on magazines, collector cards, etc.

And yes, petrol stations are definitely preparing themselves for a future where fuel is less important. Many are now off licences, some incorporate a post office, some are Spar shops, some, even smaller ones, have Subway franchises inside - definitely building up their non fuel trade.

underbank said:

Yes, different era. People have more money these days and maybe aren't quite so price sensitive - they're short of time these days, not money. I remember in the 70s people would walk past and go to other shops that were selling things just a penny or two cheaper. There was also, ironically, more choice. Our shop sold Barrs soft drinks, the grocers next door sold Ben Shaw, grocers on the next street sold a local brand - same with bread, grocers next to us sold Homepride (I think), the one round the corner sold Warburtons, and we had a proper home-made bakery too. All within easy walking distance (and sight) of eachother.

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That kind of clustering also brings business in rather than spreading it out. About 7-8 years ago now I reckon, a Tesco Express opened right next to a fairly run-down Co-op near me. I did wonder if the Co-op would be killed off, but that isn't what happened - it caused their business to boom. Why? Well, if there are two shops, it's more likely they'll have what you want between them, so it becomes a more attractive destination. And the Co-op did a full refurb and upped their game - so I'd imagine there will be at least a bit of "stopping off for Tesco, seeing the Co-op and going there instead".

Bletchleyite said:

That kind of clustering also brings business in rather than spreading it out. About 7-8 years ago now I reckon, a Tesco Express opened right next to a fairly run-down Co-op near me. I did wonder if the Co-op would be killed off, but that isn't what happened - it caused their business to boom. Why? Well, if there are two shops, it's more likely they'll have what you want between them, so it becomes a more attractive destination. And the Co-op did a full refurb and upped their game - so I'd imagine there will be at least a bit of "stopping off for Tesco, seeing the Co-op and going there instead".

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Yes, if similar, i.e. both chains of a similar size like your Tesco/Co-Op example. But a small independent won't survive next door to a Tesco Express and Tesco Express won't survive next to a full sized Asda. In my parent's case, we got a huge Asda less than a mile away and our trade halved on it's opening day and continued to decline over subsequent years. The grocers next door saw sales fall of around 80%. To compete, you need a level playing field.

Interesting programme on Radio 4 last Thursday - now available on the Sounds thingy.
The Bottom Line: The Discounters.
Interviews/discussion with top people from Poundland, B & M and a marketing company.

underbank said:

Yes, if similar, i.e. both chains of a similar size like your Tesco/Co-Op example. But a small independent won't survive next door to a Tesco Express and Tesco Express won't survive next to a full sized Asda. In my parent's case, we got a huge Asda less than a mile away and our trade halved on it's opening day and continued to decline over subsequent years. The grocers next door saw sales fall of around 80%. To compete, you need a level playing field.

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In my area, Tesco Express couldn't compete with Tesco (supermarket) half a mile away!
When Tesco bought Dillons it included my neighbourhood store. It was converted to the Tesco Express format and lasted exactly one year before closing and being converted into a One-Stop, which has remained open since.
As Bletchleyite said, when Express first opened I could do virtually all my shopping there but, over time, the chilled, fresh and frozen offering gradually reduced.

In the same way that there is a demand for Lidaldi with their limited, non-brand ranges, there remains a market for 'corner shop' convenience stores, even with their high prices. Convenience is the key. If you run out of bread (or forget) does 50p extra matter?

I am prepared to pay a little more for the convenience of a big supermarket with a wide product range, rather than a smaller discounter with a limited range. If I am going into Tesco for fresh baked bread, I might as well do the rest of my shop there. The question is how much more am I prepared to pay? Household goods were always bought at the likes of B & M when I happened to be passing - as they were significantly cheaper - I notice Tesco seem to have slashed their prices on household essentials of late.

Baxenden Bank said:

When Tesco bought Dillons it included my neighbourhood store. It was converted to the Tesco Express format and lasted exactly one year before closing and being converted into a One-Stop, which has remained open since.

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Which is also owned by Tesco.

LOL The Irony said:

Which is also owned by Tesco.

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Indeed, but they keep quiet about it though. Still retains it's old Brownhills Walsall HQ address, displayed on leaflets pushed through the letterbox. I guess few people know of the connection.

Some stores are franchises though.

LOL The Irony said:

Which is also owned by Tesco.

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Yeah, it's a lower budget version of Tesco Express - smaller stores, smaller range, lower-paid staff and no Clubcard acceptance (I find the latter odd).

I don't think they always owned it, perhaps they keep it separate partly in case they ever fancy flogging it.

My second-nearest convenience store is one, it's a Post Office which is handy, but the fresh food range is rubbish.

Bletchleyite said:

Yeah, it's a lower budget version of Tesco Express - smaller stores, smaller range, lower-paid staff and no Clubcard acceptance (I find the latter odd).

I don't think they always owned it, perhaps they keep it separate partly in case they ever fancy flogging it.

My second-nearest convenience store is one, it's a Post Office which is handy, but the fresh food range is rubbish.

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I had one right around the corner from my house but it closed earlier in the year and now we have the rip-off merchants at the euro garages or a walk to the co-op. It was supposed to close last year but they had to give 6 months notice due to it having a Post Office.

Bletchleyite said:

Yeah, it's a lower budget version of Tesco Express - smaller stores, smaller range, lower-paid staff and no Clubcard acceptance (I find the latter odd).

I don't think they always owned it, perhaps they keep it separate partly in case they ever fancy flogging it.

My second-nearest convenience store is one, it's a Post Office which is handy, but the fresh food range is rubbish.

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Tesco bought T & S Stores (which included Dillons) in October 2002 (completed early 2003) and planned to covert stores to Express format over the next three years. I looked this up a few weeks ago as I was curious when the shop was converted. Time passes so quickly! Indeed the fresh food range is poor - perhaps it depends on location/competition. The monthly promotions leaflet and shop itself seems to consist entirely of unhealthy long-life items: snacks, alcohol and fizzy pops.

I see Tesco Express more as a mini Tesco's and One Stop as convenience.

underbank said:

There's even a place for newsagents who specialise in less popular newspapers (i.e. foreign ones) and more specialist magazines (i.e. the ones that supermarkets don't sell such as hobbies etc). We have a couple of newsagents in our town that are still doing very well, simply by selling things that the supermarkets don't which is of course why WH Smith still exists on the High St - still good money to be made on magazines, collector cards, etc.

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Is that a euphemism for the successors to Mayfair, Parade, et al ?

I thought the internet would have killed them off !!!

Anyone remember "Readers Wives" and "Firkins Funny Page"

Oh those were the days when you used to slip a copy of H&E inside The Topper Comic and just pay for the latter !!

I certainly wouldn't be happy if we just had Aldi and Lidl only. As much as i like them it would greatly reduce the choice that we have and increase prices. Also there are many thanks which Aldi and Lidl simply do not stock. I think you could fairly easily get by and manage with just Aldi and Lidl and get all the basic essentials but you wouldn't be able to get a lot of things that you like that are only sold elsewhere. Also it is definitely worth noting that Aldi and Lidl are cheaper for most things but not for everything. Certain things are actually cheaper in the big main supermarkets.

Having just Aldi and Lidl would make the supermarket market a duopoly just like in Australia and New Zealand which would result in higher prices as their would really only be two shops competing against each other rather than the ten big ones that we have now.

Over in Australia you just have the choice of going to either Coles or Woolworths with pretty much nothing else (other than a few local one off independents and other things like that). Over in New Zealand you just have the choice of going to either Foodstuffs or Woolworths with pretty much nothing else (other than a few local one off independents and other things like that). Because of this the supermarkets in Australia and New Zealand are much more expensive and there is much less choice due to the complete lack of competition. In both countries each supermarket really only has one competitor. So there is not enough competition with a duopoly system.

In the UK however we obviously have a much wider choice of supermarkets to visit. These are obviously the big ten which i suspect that the majority of people do most of their shopping at:

• Aldi
• Asda
• Coop
• Iceland
• Lidl
• Marks & Spencer
• Morrisons
• Sainsburys
• Tesco
• Waitrose

Then there also seems to be these four regional chains which are only found in certain areas of the UK:

• Booths
• Farm Foods
• Fultons Foods
• Heron Foods

Of course there are also convenience shops which are much more expensive but sometimes people seem to do a lot of their shopping there. There are both places like Budgens/Londis/Premier (all three owned by Tesco) and Nisa (owned by Coop) but then you also have all of the thousands of local independently owned convenient shops as well. Finally of course you also have all of the large independent supermarkets around the UK as well.

Interestingly four of the Tesco supermarkets near me are Tesco Extra 24 hour shops which are open from 00:00 in the early hours of Monday morning until 23:59 in the late hours of Saturday evening. So the only times that these four branches shut are from 00:00 to 09:59 and 16:00 to 23:59 on Sunday but are open the rest of the time. I find this very convenient and often visit in the early hours of the morning. My work hours are 16:00 to 00:00 on Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday so i find this very convenient to visit after work. Quite a few of the Tesco and Asda branches all across the UK seem to be 24 hours so this is useful. Strangely though Sainsburys has no 24 hour shops at all and seems to shut a lot earlier than Tesco or Asda do.

I remember when i have visited Scotland i have found lots of large Asda (Supercentre and Superstore) and Tesco (Extra and Superstore) supermarkets which are actually open 24 hours a day and seven days a week. So they don't actually close at all (except maybe just on Christmas Day only) and are open all the time. This is because Scotland doesn't have the ridiculous laws that we have in England and Wales that ban this. Hopefully we will get rid of these laws at some point soon. But at least we are not as bad as the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey) which ban them from opening at all on Sundays which is ridiculous in this day.

At the moment i do the majority of my shopping at Waitrose as it is my closest supermarket. I also really like a lot of their products as well and find them to be a pleasant supermarket to shop in. Also they are not really any more expensive than the others if you are just really buying common ordinary items. It is only much more expensive when you buy all of the fancy stuff.

I also do a lot of my shopping at Marks & Spencers as it is my second closest supermarket. I also really like a lot of their products as well. They can also normally be a lot more expensive but they have some really nice products so it is sometimes worth it but you definitely couldn't do all of your shopping there.

I also go to Tesco and Sainsburys both as well. I go to both fairly often. They both normally have a good selection and you can get some cheap products there. I suppose these are the standard large supermarkets so they are always useful to go to and pick up all the basic essential stuff you need. I generally go to Tesco slightly more than Sainsburys due to their much longer opening hours.

Finally i will often pop in to Aldi and Lidl as well. I find that they actually have some very good quality products for very cheap prices. A lot of their stuff is pretty much exactly the same as what you get in the other chains of supermarkets but at much lower prices. Both of them are pretty much exactly the same so i just go to the closest one to where i am at the time i wish to do some shopping.

I rarely go to Asda or Iceland or Morrisons as i don't have any of them near me. My nearest ones are all rather far away so it is not worth going all the way to one of these chains. But i do pop in to them sometimes if i happen to be near one and need some things. I find that Asda and Morrisons are the least pleasant to shop in. Especially as they both play music unlike all the other chains. I also don't find Iceland particular pleasant to shop in but it is a bit better than the other two as they don't play music. So i don't like shopping in these three as much but i will do so occasionally. Asda sometimes has some good things to purchase at good prices though.

I also sometimes go in to one of the Coop branches near me but not too often as i find they can often be quite expensive. But i do find that the Coop have some very nice products. They always seem to have a good range which is constantly improving and have some very good quality products for sale. So i do like to go there sometimes.

So that is my views and where i shop. I like having the choice of the big ten to shop at. So i certainly wouldn't be happy with just Aldi and Lidl only and nothing else other than them.

transportusers said:

I remember when i have visited Scotland i have found lots of large Asda (Supercentre and Superstore) and Tesco (Extra and Superstore) supermarkets which are actually open 24 hours a day and seven days a week. So they don't actually close at all (except maybe just on Christmas Day only) and are open all the time. This is because Scotland doesn't have the ridiculous laws that we have in England and Wales that ban this. Hopefully we will get rid of these laws at some point soon. But at least we are not as bad as the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey) which ban them from opening at all on Sundays which is ridiculous in this day.

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If Usdaw, the main union representing workers at Tesco (and probably other retailers), continue to have their way, the Sunday trading laws in England and Wales will never be scrapped. The last time I saw some of their literature (my brother used to be an Usdaw member), they had a prominent headline about how they were campaigning to ensure the Sunday trading laws aren't changed or scrapped any time soon. Though it has been a few years since I saw that, so their stance could have changed in the mean time.

Aren't supermarkets open on a Sunday anyway now ?

They are, but I'm guessing Usdaw didn't want the supermarkets to be allowed to be open as long as they want on Sundays as they feared it could lead to them forcing their staff to work longer and more unsociable shifts on what would be the main day for most of them to spend time with their families.

Silver Cobra said:

They are, but I'm guessing Usdaw didn't want the supermarkets to be allowed to be open as long as they want on Sundays as they feared it could lead to them forcing their staff to work longer and more unsociable shifts on what would be the main day for most of them to spend time with their families.

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The sooner all this Sunday nonsense is scrapped the better. For lots of people, it's just another day. It seems to be just another excuse for unions to flex their muscle like Sunday working on the railways. The days are long gone when everyone went to church and then had family lunch. Sunday is now one of the busiest trading days and also probably the most important day for the entirety of the leisure and tourism industry.

yorksrob said:

Aren't supermarkets open on a Sunday anyway now ?

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In England and Wales no shop above a certain size can open for more than 6 hours on a Sunday. That's why you can have a small branch of Tesco/whoever open all day but a full size one will be 10-4, 11-5 or whatever they decide - the actual hours aren't prescribed.

Silver Cobra said:

They are, but I'm guessing Usdaw didn't want the supermarkets to be allowed to be open as long as they want on Sundays as they feared it could lead to them forcing their staff to work longer and more unsociable shifts on what would be the main day for most of them to spend time with their families.

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It's a fair point. We have long enough on Sunday to stock up.

mmh said:

In England and Wales no shop above a certain size can open for more than 6 hours on a Sunday. That's why you can have a small branch of Tesco/whoever open all day but a full size one will be 10-4, 11-5 or whatever they decide - the actual hours aren't prescribed.

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Ah, thanks for the confirmation.

underbank said:

The sooner all this Sunday nonsense is scrapped the better. For lots of people, it's just another day. It seems to be just another excuse for unions to flex their muscle like Sunday working on the railways. The days are long gone when everyone went to church and then had family lunch. Sunday is now one of the busiest trading days and also probably the most important day for the entirety of the leisure and tourism industry.

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Hear hear! Sunday is a normal day of the week as far as I'm concerned, and is for pretty much all of us. Scrap the Sunday trading laws I say!

I say that as a morning colleague who loves the fact we have no customers until 10:30 (my shop opens 11-5, from 10:30 for browsing etc). Makes the job SO much easier, although why people start queuing outside the doors from around 10:10 I have no idea. It's akin to opening the floodgates quite frankly!

If Sunday was treated like a normal day, as it should be, it would get rid of such stupid shopping habits. We'd query it with our union, which for us is GMB, but most of us aren't members. Why? They came round recently trying to recruit new members, and they wanted around £14 a month for it. No chance! One of them approached me, with my headphones (the over-the-head sort, so clearly visible) on during break. Even if I'd considered it before that, I'd have changed my answer to 'no' anyway, the interruption to my zoning out with pumping tunes was seriously unwelcome. Especially as it was before I'd started my break-time coffee, ooh no that's never a good idea!

I don't get this whole 'extra hours' thing with Sundays. Never seen it happen before, and a lot of us (myself included) work both days on the weekend anyway, so I don't see what the big fuss is about. My 'weekend' is on Wednesday and Thursday, and I'm perfectly happy with that. This whole allergy to working Sundays is just a bit alien to me, I mean I used to have no choice before I moved but when I did do them I didn't demand a day off elsewhere to compensate. Treat it like overtime, team spirit and all that surely? Some people will actively refuse to work Sundays without another day off in the week in return. They refuse to work both days at the weekend, and I just don't get that. Such a rule seems to have gone out of the window now, or has in recent times, thankfully.

I miss nice quiet Sundays. What's wrong with a different day once a week where the community and its environment gets a chance to recover?