Rate the shops: posh or not

[Codswallop20]

I will start you off.

Level 1

Lidl, farmfoods

Level 2

Aldi, Iceland,

Level 3

Asda, Tesco

Level 4

Morrison's, Sainsbury's

Level 5

M&S

Level 6

Waitrose, Booths

Level 7

Harrods

Level 8

Fortnum and Mason

Discuss.

(Entirely light-hearted and for entertainment purposes only, couldn't actually care less and have no aspirations of posh!)

Inspired by the other posh thread, and FYI ferrero rocher are still posh enough to make me feel somewhat inadequate.

Only on MN could this innocent and fun thread turn into a North/South thing! Sad but true....

We have Betty’s too, is that just for tourists from the South?!

We have a decent sized M&S food Hall here in Durham and despite being half the size, it stocks a good 95% of the range stocked in the big Newcastle and Metrocentre stores. They just have less of each item out. I do at least half of my food shopping there, including lots of fresh, unprocessed meat and veg. They always have a good selection of higher welfare meat and chicken, which I appreciate, having autistic children with beige diets.

I have 2 coops nearby. A small convenience store one and another that's a small but fully featured supermarket. It sells a better selection of wine than the small one - that one doesn't stock anything above the £9 mark! Their irresistible range of food and fresh bread are pretty decent but their fruit and veg tends to be overpriced and manky. I walk past the little coop to a sainsburys local, if I need to top up on fruit and veg.

When I was a kid many years ago my nan use to tell me labour people shopped at kwiksave,liberals at tesco and conservatives at sainsburys!! She was a bit nutty.

Lidl/Aldi are far posher than Asda/Morrisons. Some Asda's have McDonalds in, they are bottom tier.

@MummyJ12

We have Betty’s too, is that just for tourists from the South?!

Well it's not in the South and does attract a lot of tourists. I suppose some of those tourists might possibly come down from further north.

If there was a Kwik Save I'd shop there. I remember No Frills baked beans being 4p a can when I was a student. They are now 35p in Waitrose but I still vote the same.

@Lincslady53 in a non stalky way I think I know where you mean!
Our town has an M&S food hall, a booths, Iceland and B&M all next to the main car park so I have been known to get my frozen veg in Iceland and then my fresh meat and cheese board in booths

@DuchessOfSausage

If there was a Kwik Save I'd shop there. I remember No Frills baked beans being 4p a can when I was a student. They are now 35p in Waitrose but I still vote the same.

I remember shopping in KwikSave as a student in England and then Scotmid when I studied in Scotland! If scotmid still exists it’s definitely the least posh!

@MiddlesexGirl

Tesco is more posh than Sainsburys and Asda.

Tesco is more posh then Asda and sainsbury is marginally posgervthen them both.

@lazylinguist

Booths isn’t available in the south, so less smart simply because of location; it’s fun for holidays and that’s their main market, isn’t it?

Of course it isn't their main market. Not all Booths branches are even in tourist areas. For lots of people it's just their local supermarket/food shop. Wealthier types do their whole shop there. Most people I know either tend to pop in there when they just neer a few bits, or use it to top up their main weekly shop with some nice extras. There are 2 branches I regularly go to, neither of which is in a holiday area.

Also it sells perfectly ordinary everyday food, not 'fun stuff for holidays'. It just has some stuff that's a bit more gourmet/upmarket, and it stocks some products from local producers etc.

And fgs - less smart just because of being in the north of the country?

I know I need to get a life but this post (the original not yours @lazylinguist) has been kissing me off all day! 😡

*pissing

I agree with those saying it varies from location to location. As I said on my pp, I used to shop mainly at M&S despite having an Asda closer, but since moving I have no issues frequenting the local Asda (and Tesco, and Lidl, and Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose, I use them all - apart from Morrison’s because we don’t have one very near) - the previous one was awful, staff was rude, customers were rude, shop was grotty...

Coop is an odd beast I find. Two of the nearby small towns have big coops as their local supermarket and they are lovely, totally different from my previous local, ex-somerfield one, which was more like a convenience store really.

@MiddlesexGirl

Tesco is more posh than Sainsburys and Asda.

Er, no. About on a par with Asda maybe but Sainsbury's is much posher.

Well it's not in the South and does attract a lot of tourists. I suppose some of those tourists might possibly come down from further north.

Yes, maybe. But it's very odd that some southerners appear to think that popular shops etc in the north aren't really used by locals!

I accept that locals might well pop in for their florentins or go for a cup,of tea. I don’t accept they’re comparable t national supermarket chains.

Booths in Keswick is one of my favourite places to shop when we’re on holiday. It is regional though, so more akin to a small deli chain or farm shop, chain in other areas. It can’t be compared, in terms of how smart it is, to national chains. It is limited by location in that respect- not that you cannot have nice shops in the north. Brysons definitely does the best plum bread in the world - but you can’t compare it to Asda or Waitrose.

@LemonRoses

I accept that locals might well pop in for their florentins or go for a cup,of tea. I don’t accept they’re comparable t national supermarket chains.

Booths in Keswick is one of my favourite places to shop when we’re on holiday. It is regional though, so more akin to a small deli chain or farm shop, chain in other areas. It can’t be compared, in terms of how smart it is, to national chains. It is limited by location in that respect- not that you cannot have nice shops in the north. Brysons definitely does the best plum bread in the world - but you can’t compare it to Asda or Waitrose.

Yes, but our point is that, it’s not just for you as tourists. We are regular customers, they rely on us as locals who frequent them weekly. Thank heavens, otherwise they would not be still there for you having not survived lockdown due to the lack of tourists!

I accept that locals might well pop in for their florentins or go for a cup,of tea. I don’t accept they’re comparable t national supermarket chains.

No honestly, there are definitely locals here who do their main shop there. And lots of locals (including me) use it as their 'corner shop' - not just to buy fancy bits and bobs, but to pop in for a loaf of bread, a packet of digestive biscuits and a pack of loo roll or whatever.

If local didn't use it like a normal small supermarket, it simply wouldn't be able to keep going. As I said, the two Booths branches I use are not in places where you really get many tourists. One of them is in a very dull, not terribly nice little town just over the Cumbria border into Lancashire. It is a busy Booths branch, full of locals. It's right next door to Aldi, which no doubt increases its custom.

I definitely agree Morrison's are below Tesco. I've only shopped there occasionally but the quality was shocking.

I'm very Waitrose. I apologise.

I ain't posh but shop Waitrose, wholefoods, m and s and sainsburys.
When in the lakes, booths.

In west Devon. Morrisons is better than Tesco.

And I am completely alongside the poster who suggested that the supermarkets should look at this thread to understand their rankings.

Asda has gone down the league since Walmart bought it.
Aldi and Lidl round here are full of posher shoppers than the Sainsbury's.
Booth's is best. And I'm not in a tourist area. They've also been the best for applying the covid 'rules'.
But they do need to up the cafe game (not Ilkley as someone mentioned up thread).

What southerns fail to understand is that before the industrial revolution York was the second most important city in England after London and Yorkshire was very rich in the middle ages because of wool. The north was then the engine of the industrial revolution. Old money in the north is very old and very rich. Yorkshire has some of the best stately homes in the country. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth is in Derbyshire. Posh Northerns are proper posh old money in the way that the nouvelle riche of London in their £1M two up, 2 down can only dream of. They have to pretend we're all flat cap and whippet because if they were to acknowledge how naice places like Harrogate were they'd have to question their own working-all-hours to barely afford sufficient living space while paying a premium for the buzz of culture they have neither the time nor the money to see (and that was toured round the north with cheaper ticket prices before it went to London anyway). And admitting Booths is a real supermarket for real northerns will blow their mind because lets all pretend living in a 4 bed detached in the north that costs less than a 1 bed flat in London doesn't result in you having a large disposable income to spend in a naice supermarket.

I'm not sure of the point you are making @JaninaDuszejko. Admittedly the couple in a one bed flat in zone 1 could trade up were they to move to Yorkshire. However the couple in a 4 bed in Yorkshire could not trade up if they were to move to London. Always good to know quality of life could improve if one moved north. I married a northerner. His north in Yorkshire was gray, drab and poor. My southern home counties was green, bucolic, utter fun and very comfortable.