Well are you? I am I’m afraid to confess. I am very touchy when it comes to food. Not in the whole ‘it has to be organic’ kind of way (which I think is purely hyperbole gone mad!) but in an ‘it’s got to be decent quality’ kind of way.

Lets face it, some supermarkets have a much nicer brand image than others. That’s pretty much a fact. Unfortunately it’s a little more difficult for a supermarket to climb a band in the image stakes than to drop a band. Tesco are the exception perhaps as, to my mind, they haven’t always been seen as a ‘professional’ supermarket and seemingly used to be classed as being ‘budget’. I’m sure that many of us of a specific age-range remember the childhood chant “lets all go to Tesco where Jonny buys his best clothes, ner nah nah nah!”; whereby Jonny was some poor little child whom everyone used to pick on slightly because maybe you once saw him eating a Tesco Value kitkat or something!

It’s strange that I should then come across the below article this afternoon, which I thought I’d share with you. At a party the other week, we were discussing a potential dinner party that I was interested in hosting and so I challenged my now boyfriend Greg to get me some ingredients from Morrisons, where he works, and we would see if they lived up to the ingredients which I could have purchased from Sainsburys (my cooking skills non-withstanding!). The dinner party is yet to happen although I for one am certainly looking forward to the opportunity to challenge my views and see if I really can enjoy food (and specifically meat) from a ‘budget’ supermarket.

The article below has been taken from MSN and I found it really interesting to read. Perhaps with prices rising and consumers starting to pull in their purse-strings, the budget supermarket may finally assimilate into ‘popular’ culture as it were and drop the stigmatism ingrained into us by our parents, our peers and by our own possibly snobbish pre-conceptions :o)

Source

Supermarket snobs

By Naomi Caine

June 05 2008

Are we a nation of supermarket snobs? Have we fallen for the slick TV advertising campaign of Marks & Spencer? Or have we been seduced by the posh packaging at Waitrose?

The British certainly seem to be sniffy about some of the other supermarkets. We don’t like the shops that pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap, because they don’t make us feel special.

It’s also an image – maybe a class – thing. We dread being seen heaving 24 cans of baked beans into the back of the car at Aldi. We would rather be spotted at the organic meat counter at Waitrose or Sainsbury’s at a push.

But will we have to change our ways? Food prices have shot up alarmingly, which could force many of us to alter our shopping habits. The cost of the average supermarket food shop was 5.8% higher in May than at the beginning of the year, according to a study by retail analysts Verdict. The biggest increase is the price of fruit and vegetables, up 16% since January.

Consumers spend 13p in every pound on food, so a 5.8% increase in prices since the start of the year is painful. In fact, it has added about £800 to the average grocery bill.

The price of food is forecast to continue rising in 2009, which will make life even tougher for consumers who are struggling with the fallout from the global credit crunch.
There are already signs that consumers are taking steps to cut their grocery bills by shopping in some of the cheaper supermarkets.

Aldi, for example, enjoyed year-on-year sales growth of nearly 19% in the 12 weeks to May 18, according to market researcher TNS Worldpanel. Its cut-price rival Lidl saw takings rise by just under 10%.

In a further sign of a shopping shift, Iceland posted double digit rises in sales during the period. Then there’s Morrison’s, which has just reported a strong start to the financial year, with sales up 7% on a like for like basis in the first quarter.

At the same time, heavyweights such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s have suffered dips in their share of the sector’s annual £120 billion market.

“Aldi is the clear winner in terms of sales growth during the period. The till roll rose 18.9% year-on-year to £577 million,” said Edward Garner, director of research at TNS.

“Its market share also improved to 2.8% from 2.5%. The growth is virtually solely fuelled by new shoppers visiting the stores rather than existing shoppers spending more.”

If you have never been to an Aldi store, let me explain. It’s a bit like a budget airline. There are no frills, fussy displays, bag packers, trolley collectors. No, it’s just a selection of everyday items.

You might not get a wealth of choice or a knockout service, but the store reckons it can cut your bills by 20%. Other discounts supermarkets of a similar ilk include Netto and Lidl.

Then we’ve got the likes of Asda, Morrison’s and Iceland, which tend to aim at your pocket rather than your poseur. They are unashamedly out to offer value for money.

In fact Asda recently made a direct appeal to cash-strapped consumers with its “2p sausage”. The supermarket cut the price of a pack of eight sausages in its budget Smartprice range from 54p to just 16p. If you add a 2.5 kilogram bag of Smartprice potatoes at 73p and a 1.5kg bag of carrots at 68p, you can feed a family of four for £1.57.
It’s cheap, but it’s a far cry from organic produce. What about Worcester Old Spots? Aren’t we supposed to be shunning cut-price supermarket produce for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s organic chickens that have felt the sun on their backs before the chop on their necks?

Surely organic food is likely to be another victim of the credit crunch and higher food prices. Can we continue to pay high prices for a clear conscience? Take chicken, for example. In my local Waitrose today you could buy an organic free-range chicken at £6.19 a kilo, or you could opt for a standard chicken at £2.79 a kilo. If you’re on a budget it’s a no-brainer.

Organic campaigners nevertheless believe the market will withstand the national tightening of belts. Peter Melchett, of the Soil Association, said: “The main thing that is driving up the price of food is the price of oil because most food is produced from oil-based fertiliser. Organic food is produced through the sun’s energy so actually organic food is less prone to these price rises than non-organic food.”

But even the advocates expect a slowdown in sales growth as we all feel the financial pinch.

Of course, we can’t stop eating. But our shopping habits will undoubtedly change. We will perhaps buy our loo rolls and canned foods from the discount supermarket – under cover of darkness. We might then splash out at the local farmers’ market for our meat and seasonal fruit and vegetables. So the big supermarkets will perhaps feel the squeeze.

Will it topple Tesco? It’s unlikely, but we can all perhaps enjoy watching the supermarket giants suffer, even just a little bit.