I came in here for that special offer: a guaranteed personality

[venta]

When I popped to Tesco last, I noticed several things which are intended to show the customer how seriously they are taking people's need to spend less. Many items have little flags showing them as "discount brands", the special offers seem to be on basics rather than on exciting new lines, and they have an example trolley by the door.

As you walk in, the example trolley is stacked with goods and has its till receipt blown up large and laminated. It's one of the shallow kind of trollies, and it is stacked full. I forget the exact total on the receipt, but I believe the thrifty customer is supposed to go "Wow! All that for just £50!"

This thrify customer looked at the bottom line and went "£50! For a week's shopping! You must be joking!"

Now, in fairness, I presume the trolley is intended to stay there as a dazzling incentive for some time, and thus it can't have greengrocery in it. Fruit and veg make up a fairly hefty proportion of my shopping, so it's not a fair comparison.

After my shopping trip, I have enough to feed myself for well over a week, some storecupboard basics and the household's kitchen and toilet roll requirements for the immediate future. I also have a bottle of beer as a present for my Dad, and my shopping was just over £15.

Admittedly, I had already bought some vegetables from a market stall at the weekend: I don't know about anyone else, but I'm an absolute sucker for the stalls which pile produce in bowls and offer you 'any bowl for £1'. A combination of delight at the sight of piled vegetables and a slight hint of the fairground hook-a-duck game has me purchasing bowls left, right and centre. They're often staggeringly good value if you have the capacity to use so much before it goes off. On which note, if anyone in Oxford wants some avocados, see me. I've got... quite a lot.

But even allowing for the extra shopping there and at the cheapjacks in Brent Cross, I spent less than £20. I shall eat well, and sometimes even excitingly, for a fraction of what Tesco thinks is bargain prices. I wouldn't even regard my shopping as rock-bottom; certainly I think there were things in it that I could have done without or replaced with something cheaper.

I am, of course, largely feeding just me - my meals will often stretch to include my housemates, ChrisC, or anyone else who's passing, but I don't have anything complicated like children to feed or look after. Even so... I don't understand a mindset which requires, in times of hardshop, convenience foods to become cheaper. The difference in price is the convenience and if you can't afford it, you have to live with the inconvenience of chopping up the damn vegetables yourself.

Maybe Tesco's approach should be to leave prewrapped, preprepared food prices as they are and instead print out cards with idiot-proof recipes for basic everyday dishes. I'm not sure customers would like it, but it might be much more useful. When people talk about "hardship" and mean that they have to switch to a less-luxurious brand of individually packaged chocolate biscuits, I'm inclined to say that they don't know the meaning of the word.

Please note this post was brough to you without the words "current", "financial" and "climate". That's fast becoming one of those phrases that you hear so often it's rendered meaningless. Beware the new CFCs.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, avocado...

Did you see the Jamie Oliver programme last week (next ep: tomorrow night)? Depressing watching, for many (complicated) reasons.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Me and the pictorial wireless don't really interact much :) I can just about work the iPlayer, though, so if it's on there would you recommend it ?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Yes, it seems quite peculiar to me that the 'financial crisis' seems to mostly consist of people thinking twice before making impulse purchases, and actually comparing prices at the supermarket. I was brought up to do this! If anything, I've had to slightly break my childhood conditioning in order to be able to treat myself without feeling guilty or forcing myself to go for the 'second-best' option.

It used to be more of a struggle until recently, as I'm slightly discalculate, so would struggle to work out in my head whether, say, 59p for 350g was cheaper than 85p for 500g. But now the supermarkets make it really easy by putting the equivalent price of a kilo below the pack price. So there's really no excuse.

I can't be the only person who actually looks at this stuff, can I?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Judging by the howling mistakes I often find on those price-comprison cards, I certainly don't think the person who prints them reads them!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

It'll be C4's equivalent, whatever that is - oh, yes, looks like it's on there. Jamie's Ministry of Food.

"Recommend" is an interesting word - I think it's worth seeing, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses, but I'm not promising you'll think it's wonderful tv. :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah. On an obscure and ill-thought-out point-of-principle, I've been avoiding installing Silverlight on my computer. I think that means I can't use ITV/C4s internet watchery.

By the way, you're welcome to some avodacos if you can recommend a transmission medium :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

When people talk about "hardship" and mean that...

Some helpful definitions:

Crisis: An event so serious that it becomes difficult to utterly ignore it and carry on as normal.

Hardship: Barely perceptible changes in lifestyle brought on by a crisis (see above). Such as, for example, needing to look at the price of an item before purchasing it.

All this aside, I'm curious to know what was in their trolley.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Heh - in theory I could take a walk but in practice I suspect I'm not yet well enough to make it all the way to your house. [Going out twice on Saturday knocked me out so much I slept for 12 hours last night.] Perhaps I can send narenek round on the scrounge later? ;)

You're probably not missing that much on the Jamie Oliver front, per se, but it was very interesting seeing him come into contact with people who had never cooked, and his reactions to their reasons and situations. Guardian blog, G2 review, etc.

[rosenkavalier.livejournal.com]

Even so... I don't understand a mindset which requires, in times of hardshop, convenience foods to become cheaper. The difference in price is the convenience and if you can't afford it, you have to live with the inconvenience of chopping up the damn vegetables yourself.

This is something that I've increasingly noticed, and really can't get my head around - the idea that highly processed, pre-prepared foods are the staples which should be available to everyone, whereas it's only well-off people who would consider buying 'real' ingredients and making something from scratch... Very odd.

[venta.livejournal.com]

On a not-very-related note, I was intrigued to note a few months ago the "Tesco's ingredients" range: poshly-packaged herbs and spices, and a range of things like breadcrumbs, unusual flours, dried mushrooms, and so on. It looks quite exciting, it was just the name that amused me. They were all ingredients, but so was practically everything else in my basket :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I didn't go rootling about in it, but the obvious things were packets of biscuits, packets of cereal, and crisps. And lots of things which were in boxes, but I could only see an uninformative side of the box.

If it's still there next time I visit I'll have a proper rummage :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's kinda weird, because crisps and biscuits are actually very cheap. Possibly not quite as cheap as market veg, but certainly cheaper than most of Tesco's veg.

[venta.livejournal.com]

yes, but they tesselate better than veg: you can fit loads more in a trolley :)

I admit I'm somewhat curious now, and surprised I didn't investigate the contents of the trolley more fully.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I was commended, sometime last year, by narenek's mother, for "filling the kitchen cupboards with ingredients" (her emphasis). First, this grossly underestimates his ability and tendency to cook from scratch anyway, and second, isn't that what kitchen cupboards are for? I cannot imagine a kitchen with no ingredients whatsoever in it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If he's passing on the way home from work or something he's welcome to call in for tea and/or veg ;)

Having perused your two links, I'm curious but feel it might be too much like carcrash TV for me to watch it. I find Mr Oliver a bit personally irksome, but I hope he achieves what he's set out to do.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Having a freezer helps of course, but even with just cupboards I expect to have enough that in the event of civilisation grinding to a halt I can continue eating for some time. My mother's a great cook, and would consider it a grave personal failing if unexpected visitors descended and she couldn't produce a two-course meal from a standing start.

I guess having grown up with home cooking such things come relatively easily to me (which I think is rather Mr Oliver's point).

[triskellian]

Either Tesco or Sainsburys has an entire aisle devoted to 'cooking ingredients', which I find bizarre everytime I encounter it.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I mean, I can make sustaining food out of just flour, tap water and a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add a couple of cans of chickpeas, an onion and some curry paste and I could feed four people!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

All cooking, as far as I'm concerned, starts with 'fry an onion'. Even if there's no onions in the recipe, frying an onion gives you something to do while you think what to do next. And smells nice.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what do you make ? Chapati ? I don't know how to make those, and attempts a few years ago were disastrous.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

*nod* My mother's the competent-but-unenthusiastic daughter of a great cook - she cooked every day when I was a child, out of necessity, but nowadays she only cooks for grandchildren and special occasions, simply because she's fed up with it (she has a lot of dietary restrictions, which limit her choices, and she often eats dinner alone thanks to Dad's working hours, so I understand not being keen to bother with much). But similarly, I grew up able to follow a recipe, cook for pleasure, use leftovers sensibly, etc. I think 'I cannot imagine a kitchen...' is my own failure of imagination (although I've been poor - on IS and HB and living in one room with a shared kitchen - and I still cooked what I could when I could, but I had that history to start from) because I do know there are people out there without that basic knowledge of cooking, and without the ideas or ability to try learning without outside help, but I still can't really comprehend it, you know? Just like I know there are people who don't like food, but I still don't understand that, either. :)

One of the better points JO made in last week's show was that school Home Economics kitchens sit unused and empty all evening and weekend and through the holidays. Getting adults in to evening classes and summer schools would be wonderful - if it could be done.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

You forgot the smaaaaaaaall aubergine. ;-)

But yes.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I like your icon :)

I was making red vegetable curry[*] the other night, and appeared to have detached my brain before I started. I was just musing that I'd done it wrongly, and cooked things in quite the wrong order, when I realised the chopped onion was still on the board. At which point I nearly gave up. If you're doing anything at the stove and the onion's not involved, you've pretty much gone wrong already.

[*] as in, Thai red curry. Most of the vegetables in it were actually green.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

As with many things that retailers do, it's not aimed at us, it's aimed at the rich people who really do think they need to buy premium individually wrapped biscuits and pre-chopped vegetables. We are just inconvenient bystanders.

[triskellian]

Custard!

But, OK, anything other than custard ;-)