What is wrong with the Co-op?

[Pruners]

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Is co-op, rainbow??

3 co-ops near me have closed in the last year. they were just too dear and scruffy looking. unfortunately like everywhere else we have been taken over by TESCO. there are 7 tesco within 3 miles of me.

i know exactly what you mean but tbh i know am rather fond of the glowering staff and ridiculous eastern european feeling on a sunday evening. the slickness of a waitrose or tesco makes my skin itch. it would be impossible to do a whole shop there but i am v. partial to their soup mix.

They never look particularly clean, and have a certain 'Co-op' smell about them.

It's a shame, because they could and should be fantastic.

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I was going to write what HumphreyCushion just wrote. A Co-op was my nearest suoermarket for 5 years and it always seemed grubby somehow.

Their ethics have been great for years (obviously, when you look at the founding concept) but as you say, there's this definite feeling that they don't make any effort in other business areas.

agree they need to invest in the shops and make them more appealing.Haven't seen a tv ad for coop for ages- remember the singing sheep. for me the purposeof the co was convenience- if you ran out of something on a Sunday afternoon you could nip down to the co.now it is just as easy for me to go to the garage spar which is closer and also does a lot of fair trade items. the co does not even compete on price. it really would be my ast resort for shopping.shame

Yes, they do seem dingy and down-market - and yet the grapes and tomatoes at our little o-op are always delicious, fgar more flavoursome than Tesco's.

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Is coop, "rainbow"????

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pruners have facebooked you! you can run but you cannot hide.

i adore co-operative ethics - i bank witht he co-op i use the store at the end of the street - but only for bits and pieces. i love its ethical values.

the stock is overpriced - why biy beans there at 40p or more when you can drive to tesco and get them for 10p?

and why on earth would i buy fruit and veg there when it is all mushy ?

not good enough co-op -

Actually, to be fair, my ex Co-op used to get very involved with the Community. For example, the local scouts would bag pack at Xmas (dressed in Santa hats etc) and would get tipped - monies raised going into scout funds. I'd forgotten as well that that branch too also employed people with learning disabilities.

Rainbow, im sure is a derivative of co-op. We have one in our town and its dingy, and grubby. It has poor quality fruit and veg and meat. The bread is almost always stale. Its good for an electrical bargain though.

Co-op is my nearest reasonable sized supermarket. I like it because of the loyalty scheme and their ethical trading. The choice isn't fab, but it's not on the scale of a massive Asda or Tesco so I wouldn't expect to be able to buy in bulk for example. But I will use it for an in between-shop rather than my entire grocery shop IYSWIM. Ours isn't grubby, but isn't in the best area so it feels a little forgotten, which is a shame.

Our Co-op (v dingy corner of N London) is quite different. It's smallish and certainly far from glam, but it passes the fresh parmesan/pak choi/organic cheddar test. Just started stocking freerange RSPCA-approved meat, also: big way-hay.

However they do have dependability issues and run their stock very low.

I find the staff charming, far more cheerful than the people in the Sainsbury's local round the corner. I'd suggest you get hold of the manager and tell him/her you'd love to support the store, request things you think would sell.

I think a lot does depend on the demographic: though though this is a scuzzy area, there must be loads of pak-choi consumers out there!

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new co-ops are without exception lovely - they built one near work recently and it is way better than the Somerfield that's its nearest competitior.
They're about to build one near home as well - again to compete with an exceptionally revolting Somerfield.

oh and we happened to pop into a newly built one when we were on holiday and it was gorgeous. Shopping experience comparable to Waitrose.

I wonder if it's expensive to bring the old ones up to par, but if they start from scratch they can do well.

the one near me does make half hearted attempts to pander to the middle class ponce market, i do so enjoy the mid morning scrabble for organic milk. but the wall of crisps and chemistry experiment sweeties is testamount to its real clientel

The (quite large) Co-op in my village is hugely overpriced, the quality of the fruit and vegetables is very poor, the fridges are always breaking down leaving puddles of water seeping onto the floor and the whole place has an ambience of 'there's nowhere else to go in the village so we can do what we like' about it. There are two Tescos, an Asda and a Sainsburys within a 3 mile car journey but what if you don't have a car? When I was in that situation I was lucky enough to have a mother to share the weekly shopping trip but not everyone has that option.

In the village I grew up in Tesco was single handedly responsible for closing the local Co-op and I say good. There the Co-op was exactly like the one in my village now except much smaller so as everything was cramped together and some of the staff were vile. It refused to keep up with market competition and as a result it closed down and the building has just been demolished to make way for a bigger car park for Tesco.

Co-op used to be traditionally the place to shop on a budget (before people would have descirbed themselves as being on a budget). I remember my gran saving her co-op stamps religiously until Christmas and using their savings scheme. They do a roaring trade in funerals too - so very community/grass roots minded orginally, but a bit confused as to their policy nowadays.

It's all very well being Fair trade and globally aware if your local customers only have pennies to spend on their weekly grocery shop.