to find hte British obsessive about supermarkets

[BradSplit]

and dont start all the " oh in france htey all skip along with baskets to the boulangerie crap"

but i mean its ONLY a supermarket

dont like it? dont go there? oyu dont need to have the name of it branded on your arms

There is a lot of supermarket snobbery about, I find

I DO think it's a shame we are so reliant on them though, whatever one it is

I said on the Morrisons thread that MN is strange re supermarket threads. They always go tits up I find.

Remember one where a MNer was going to buy Tesco value instead of her normal Waitrose stuff as an experiment - cue 725 posts of shriekingness and accusations of snootery.

I did ask Anna once about supermarkets in the 12th arronissement and she made me laugh by saying there is not so much supermakrekt snobbery in France as one's maids do the shopping if you of a certain class.

I wish I could buy fresher/ locally produced stuff but I cant afford it and Tescos, well I can.

GetOrf - well I don't know about Anna but my maid wouldn't be seen dead anywhere other than le waitrose. I suspect her maids come from the wrong side of the arrondissement.

It's because the supermarkets have so much POWER. Over us, over suppliers, farmers etc.

They really do.

i live 5 minutes walk from a brand new Morrisons 15 minutes walk from Tescos and one hour by car from Waitrose so as much as i love Waitrose for treats i am going to stick with Morrisions and Tesco

Agree, they are too powerful

And they make me spend too much money on shit I don't need because it's all there conveniently under one roof

Which is why I try and avoid going in one and stick religiously to my list whilst ordering on-line

i blame the french for huge supermarkets we get now. oooh let's go to they hypermarket at calais.

now we all have the sodding things.

Agree - it's weird. Fortunately we do not have Waitrose up here (apart from one in Edinburgh), but as someone else pointed out, the brand products are all the same and the own-label products are made by the same factory but with different store labels stuck on.

What also makes me go is the sneering that goes on at the type of person who shops in Asda/Waitrose/Tesco. If you've got the time to make judgments about other shoppers, you've got way too much time on your hands. Supermarkets are places to get round as quickly as possible, not to stand ride round on your high horse wearing your judgey pants!

Or, do the sensible thing and shop online...so much nicer. Agree that all supermarkets are bastards with too much buying power though.

I do judge Asda tho...

I agree with Paolos girl about supermarket snobbery. I didn't even know that people were like that until recently. I had had a conversation with another mum at school who was talking about Tesco and didn't I think such and such was great about the cafe there. I told her I didn't know because I went to Sainsburys. Later another mum told me that this woman hated me and said that I was being snobby because I had said this.

I go to Sainsburys because it is closest to my house. I had not idea that people cared which supermarket they or anyone else went to. I would never had known otherwise.

It does make me a bit though when people say they "can't afford meat from the butcher" or whatever

IME (I buy from a butcher) the meat goes MUCH FURTHER than the cheaper supermarket stuff

I bought a whole chicken the other day for a tenner. Got the butcher to chop it all up, so had the body, the legs, breasts and wings

Roasted the body (served me, DP and 2DC)

Carcass as stock

Legs - froze for later date (will be a meal for DP and I)

Wings - will do mini-stew for dds

Breasts - will do something like a curry or stir-fry that will be a meal for the 4 of us

A tenner well spent, IMO. Wouldn't get all those meals out of £10 of supermarket meat (not semi-decent stuff, anyway)

Supermarkets are way too powerful, everywhere. Even in France and Italy, where independent shops are still surviving (actually, I don't know about France, but in Italy many lovely independent shops with lovely local products are really struggling).

I must say, that as a foreigner, I found many supermarkets in the UK quite depressing. I won't name names though

I work for them. All of them. I mean officially I am employed by another company but as we supply the supermarkets I might as well be working for them. And they are not that nice to work with TBH.

But there is of course a class heirarchy about them. I think we could build a heirarchy out of anything.

i hate tesco otherwise all much the same.

Notnow - you can buy a supermarket chicken for much less than a tenner. A cheap one is about £3, mid range £4.50-£5, and an organic one is about £7! They would all do the meals you describe - and I know, because there are 5 of us and I regularly stretch one that far.

£10 - blimey!!!

All the own label stuff is not the same for every supermarket! The difference between a Sainsburys hazelnut yoghurt and an Asda one is massive. The Asda one's are absolutely vile, like water, feel sick just thinking of it!

Don't think it's vile, watery and vomit inducing, but each to their own. OK, maybe not every own label stuff is the same, but a lot are, and some are better at some supermarkets and worse at others.

Paolosgirl - just my experience. I don't buy cheap meat because it's not nice (IMVHO)

The supermarket equivalent of my £10 organic butcher's chicken has not stretched in a comparitive way, I have tried before

The chicken is smaller, there is far less meat on it. I'd get a couple of meals from it but not much beyond that

I shop at Asda, Somerfield, Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsburys - and would shop occasionally at Waitrose if we had one nearer than Edinburgh - but my real point in posting to this thread is to tell GetOrfMoiLand how much I love the phrase "..shriekingness and accusations of snootery..." Please may I borrow the word snootery, to use myself?

Even the snobs round here shop at tesco simply because there is no waitrose or sainsburys.

I was pleased to see somerfield had been taken over by co op though
Given a choice I would shop at a decent coop all the time but I have no choice

My uncle has been a buyer for Sainsburys, Somerfield and now Tesco... he is a man of few scruples but even he will admit he has " sold his soul to the devil"
When The Co-op was taking over Somerfield, he said that he noticed a real difference in ethics. He didn't stay with them because Tesco was offering a lot more cash... as I said, few scruples.

I don't think I would want to be a buyer for the supermarkets - I expect they are utter bastards to their suppliers.

I like to be able to sleep at night knowing that i haven't screwed some poor sod into the ground with my cost down demands.

And i am a buyer by profession. Sod that for a game of soldiers.

Lol davidtennants - have snootery with shriekingness thrown in for free!

"I expect they are utter bastards to their suppliers."

Yes.