Has M&S food quality dropped?

[Thewiseoneincognito]

This is a weird one but I’ve started to notice over the last couple of months the taste and quality of Marks and Spencer’s food items has really lowered a lot. Has any one else?

I’ve had a few of their ready meals recently with huge chunks of chewy beef in that clearly hasn’t been cut properly, sounds ok but it just looks gross and is usually big boobs of fatty gristle. I found a large sharp piece of flint in a mushroom dish, a piece of blue plastic film in one of their soups. Their sandwiches seem to have stale bread despite being well before the end date. Usually I can let the odd thing slide and put it down to once in a blue moon but it seems to be a regular occurrence.

Before anyone says shop elsewhere, it’s my local food hall, the alternative is a tiny Tesco or Sainsbury’s, great if you need snacks or milk but not exactly the type of store to do a food shop.

M&S has always been a better standard of prepared food compared to others but now I’m doubting they’re any different than regular supermarket offerings. The range of foods seems to have been cut too like they’re no longer bothering to innovate, just churning out the same old but with lower quality control.

[quote subbysammiexoxo]@ZaraW they have some of the best vegetarian food on the market.[/quote]
I agree, their veggie/vegan food is amazing.

I still like M&S! Agree the ready meals aren't much to write home about and have been disappointed with the Gastropub range particularly, but we don't often buy the ready meals. Find their bread, cheese, sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, deli range really nice and their fruit and veg is definitely the best. We had Christmas lunch stuff from them last time as well and all enjoyed it. Not found a problem with the meat either. Would say the ice cream hasn't been anything special but it's still my preferred place to shop.

@Luzina

Brexit supply issues are a real problem in food at the moment. Quality is down everywhere

Meat from supermarkets (any of them) is not good quality and is very cruel. Has always been the case. You can tell from eating it that the animal has not had a good life. This has always been the case.

@OtterInDisgrace

PLUS. All of their food contains battery eggs and much of it is riddled with palm oil, and horrendously overpacked in plastic. It’s a big NO from me.

While some of their stuff is disappointing, at the moment, markses were one of the first supermarkets to stop using battery eggs.

On lasagna, I used to love the Gastropub one. It was far better than I could make. They've completely replaced it with the "best ever" one which is just far too cheesey and greasy.

I still like M&S food. Waitrose I have definitely found a drop in food quality. Had their sausages the other day and it wasn’t nice.

Have to agree with the comments about chicken, we went off Tesco chicken breasts a while ago thinking Sainsbury’s and M&S were better, but now we are even finding some of the more expensive ones, corn fed or organic have really nasty chewy bits. We are finding we are eating more fish these days.

As for cost cutting , covid and Brexit, they have a huge number of staff on furlough and they’re operating with tightly edited selections of clothing and home items in my local store, one full floor of clothing is open as usual.

So yes they will be losing money to a degree but they’re in a stronger, more enviable position than a vast majority of retailers. I also don’t believe cutting corners with your most successful division is good business sense either.

I guess the problem also is that most people don't complain about sub standard food. Sometimes it's a few days later and the receipt is in the bin, and it is not worth making a whole trip to the supermarket to complain about a £3 product.

I bought a £2.50 pack of jellies from Tesco last week which my dc ate and complained tasted funny. They are 6 months out of date! But I've thrown away the packaging and receipt, and the customer services queue at Tesco is massive, so I've just thrown them in the bin.

Im wondering if the quality has dropped due to joining forces with ocado, so the quantity has gone up and that lowers the quality

I find waitrose is definitely the best for quality for fresh, with lidl for basics. Works for me, never any wastage.

I bought a sandwich the other day, sister in law had said how dire they were, but thought I’d try anyway. She was right 😕

I bought duchy organic chicken breasts, streamed them and they were awful.

I've always found Waitrose pretty overrated & generally prefer the M&S or Sainsbury's option however I've noticed across the board that chicken hardly ever as any flavour.

‘ Not a drop in quality, more a total disappearance - liver (I have iron deficiency). Always have it from M & S as much better quality. They haven’t had any for several weeks. I managed to corner a manager who seemed to think Brexit was the problem.’

Agree. M&S liver is best from supermarkets, good quality & well cut so little waste. It used to be 99p per pack so good value. British meat as well.

Pre-Brexit the supply varied & there had been a significant price hike.

‘ I've found most meat and poultry products now contain chickpea flour or pea fibre which gives the meat / chicken an odd taste. My DH suffers from a legume allergy and there was no signage or label update highlighting these changes on items we regularly bought so we found out the hard way when he went into anaphylaxis.’

@RustyParker How did you find this out?

Am interested as OH is Coeliac & we have strict GF & low FODMAP house. On more than one occasion OH has had reaction to food that was freshly prepared & cooked from completely GF foods. We assumed that the fresh meat was GF/additive free, so we were stumped to to find cause of reaction.

Pea fibre is something he has to avoid. Had the meat been labelled thus, it would not have gone in the basket.

I’ve started using local butcher. Better quality meat, reasonable prices, cut & trimmed as requested. Personal service so don’t mind the queue.

Hi I work in food retail head office in commercial strategy - one of my remits is to look across all retailers and see if there are any significant shifts in their strategies. M&S food quality has definitely reduced as they are trying to get more people to shop with them.

Their prices are just too high for most people and with the Ocado partnership they are trying to become more of an everyday option. Reducing their RSPs will be a key part of this - they are probably moving to a 'good enough' quality level rather than best in class.

The other thing to point out is that M&S food historically tasted really good as it had way more fat &/or salt in their recipes. Most other supermarkets have cut down on these nutritional aspects due to health aspirations. They are probably playing catch up on this too

If I find a problem with a product I make sure I tell the supermarket or the manufacturer. If you just ignore it they will keep getting away with it. On the occasions I've had an issue I have always been refunded and in some cases compensated further if it's been more serious.
On a quality note I have also found buying decent chicken breasts an issue recently. I've tried buying free range and organic in effort to get over the problem but they have been little better than bog standard regardless of the retailer. They have nearly all been tough and unpleasant.

Definitely agree with the quality going down on meat. We've switched to our local butchers most of the time, but if we need to get a delivery instead we get a whole cornfed chicken and butcher it at home. Absolute pain to do though so not exactly a great solution for people.

@Pipsquiggle what's an RSP?

Steak from Turkey, @JackieWeaverHandforthCouncil?

That is seriously odd, especially from M&S.

I do 75% of our food shop in Asda and even there there’s still a lot of Irish (as in Eire, not NI) minced beef on the shelves, often more than any of U.K. origin, so I can’t think it’s down to Brexit. And I don’t recall any sort of beef in whatever form, from anywhere else, in any other supermarket I use (Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, M&S).

Pork and bacon are a different matter - still plenty of rather cheaper (and presumably factory farmed) from Denmark, Holland and Germany.

@MoltenLasagne

Sorry retail jargon - RSP = Retail Selling Price.

M&S have been actively reducing their selling prices on certain areas to attract more people in. Quality has reduced to 'good enough'

Waitrose are still head and shoulders above the rest on quality in regards to sourcing and authenticity

I just feel like a bit of a wanker saying ‘oh I only shop at Waitrose!’ but that’s where I’ll end up because I’ve always been extremely picky about quality meat- not just for taste but what kind of life it had too. Fish needs to be sustainably sourced too.I will start getting more from the butchers/grocers but it really comes down to convenience as I’m sure is the case for a lot of people. I work 45-50 hours a week and I just don’t always have the time to shop local or cook from fresh. I do like Abel and Cole but I think their prices are astronomical depending on what is in your box (in winter it’s a LOT of onions and potatoes) and I don’t like the way they pack their fresh produce in tons of plastic.

Also with M&S- I do know there’s a hike up in station prices but passing through Paddington the other day I went to grab a sandwich- most of them were priced at £4 or even higher. Ridiculous for the quality.

I agree @fussychica about the chicken breasts, bizarrely usually one of the two would be passable but mostly inedible.
I wouldnt willingly choose M&S sandwiches either. M&S provide the cafe at the local hospital so sometimes it’s that or nothing if caught out with a delayed appointment

That because prior to arriving at the supermarket/warehouse, it has been kept in cold storage, often at temperatures far lower than is beneficial. Most supermarkets refrigerate their fruit & vegetable section or keep the entire section too cold, so when you take anything home and keep it in the cupboard, it turns to slime. And if it doesn't turn to slime, it is tastless.

Yes, the quality of M&S food has dropped. I stopped buying red meat there almost a decade ago as the meat always smelt questionable even if it had several days before the eat by date. More recently, organic chicken is another thing I've stopped buying as the quality is not good and the meat is tasteless. It is not a patch on Waitrose Duchy Organics.

My main gripe with M&S is that it is over-priced for sub-par quality, and it has become noticeably worse since the Ocado deal. I hoped when that happened, there would be more interesting selection of food stuff in M&S, but that hasn't been the case at all. I love M&S, I would love to spend my money in there but there is just not anything I want to buy to eat - ready meals are overly salty, their fruit and veg is often partially frozen and tasteless. If M&S food goes to pot, there really is no saving them.

Well there was a queue of over 30 people outside the M&S foodhall today so the drop in standards hasn’t put people off. I turned round and went to sainsburys.