As part of my constant quest to keep our food
supplies up and the cost of feeding our children down, I often trade down a
brand or two in my shopping.
Having grown up with Heinz, Kelloggs and Ribena, you’d
think this wouldn’t come naturally to me. However, I do remember as a child, in
learning the value of money, I failed to understand why Mum (and everyone
really) didn’t buy the cheapest possible of everything. To be fair, I don’t
have the most discerning of palates. To me a custard cream tastes the same
whether it is ‘basics’ or ‘finest. ’ Unfortunately Ben can tell his biscuit
quality and rejects both the basics and the supermarket own brand in favour of
McVities. I blame my mother, if she didn’t stock the more expensive variety in
her house, there would be no comparison to make and he never would have
developed superior taste buds.
I do agree some things are quite obviously not as good.
For example, you can’t help feeling a little cheated if your weetabix are
skinny and rectangular, and multi grain hooplas are not nearly as nice as
Cheerios. Although it doesn’t stop me buying them if the kids aren’t complaining.
Most food stuffs we buy are essentially just to fill a hole (or six of them)
and we’re not overly fussy. Even Waitrose has an essential range, though it
amuses me that they stock ‘essential hummus’ – only Waitrose customers would
consider hummus ‘essential.’
I find myself driving to Lidl in Leatherhead to get
the 4 pints of milk for £1 deal, I can’t taste any difference in the milk but I
do worry about the cows. Unless you bulk buy milk like we do, it is almost not
worth the petrol over there. As I told Mum, I will shop more morally when I can
afford to, I like to think that even if the cows are badly paid they are not
badly treated.
I love getting a bargain though and
mysupermarket.com is great for this. Not only does the website make a
satisfying ‘ch ching ch ching’ noise as you select the cheaper option, it simultaneously
fills up your basket from each supermarket with the total price comparison and
then sends your order to whichever shop you select. (Surprisingly Sainsbury’s
has usually come out the cheapest.)
I once scoured the packaging of the supermarket own
brand pitta bread and the everyday value version to find out what the actual
difference was between them. I discovered that the extra 20p you paid in going
for the brand up was for the extra virgin olive oil and sea salt as oppose to
olive oil and salt. Who could tell? The value pittas were also slightly smaller
but that was admitted on the packet. Considering I often buy seven packets of
six at a time, my £1.40 saving from choosing the value range is not to be sniffed
at.
I love the anti- marketing of the basics products.
The strap line on the pitta bread is ‘a little bit smaller, still fills up a
lunchbox. ’ The long’ grain rice is marked up with; ‘some broken, still fluffy
when cooked.’ When the marketing team can’t think of anything nice to write
about the food, for example on the soups, they just put ‘no fancy packaging’ or
even ‘nothing fancy.’
Some other examples that made me laugh, some purely
for their dreadful puns or lame rhymes;
Peeled plum tomatoes – ‘some peel, still appealing’
Prawns – ‘smaller, no need to shell out more’
Bread- ‘simple recipe, a little less dough’
Peas – ‘a little less sweet, still go down a treat’
Mushy processed peas (not that I’d ever buy them
anyway) – ‘more mushy, still lovely’
Mixed vegetable savoury rice – ‘fewer vegetables,
still satisfying’
Tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce – ‘same spaghetti,
different sauce.’
It tends not to bode well if you describe food as ‘different’,
it usually means you are trying to be kind about it.
The use of the word ‘still’ or ‘even’ to promote
something is surely not a positive marketing strategy, but maybe that is the
point.
Any basics cleaning product just says ‘cleans, no
added promises.’
Who knows what else you get if you pay a bit more, a
product that also mows your lawn?
They may as
well write ‘It’ll Do,’ but considering that is exactly the attitude with which
I shop, it suits me perfectly.
The other day I was so busy in the shop trying save
a pound here and fifty pence there that I totally forgot to pay for the car
park. Luckily I remembered mid shop, abandoned my full trolley and got to the
car in time with a ticket before the traffic warden did. It really would have
made a nonsense of my penny counting if I had got a £40 parking fine.
The most uneconomical way to shop is to take the
children with you. Then I get “Please, please can we get the iced doughnuts
with sprinkles,” from Ben and “Can we have this cereal? It is my favourite,
please! ” from Patrick. Then it’s “Please can I get these chocolate mousses for
my packed lunch?” from Emilia, and because she knows me so well she adds “They
are ‘Basics’.”
Shopping with Rachel is also tricky, not because
she fills up the trolley with stuff she wants, although there is some of that,
but because she refuses to go in a lift. If it is just the two of us, I have to
put the trolley in the lift, press the button, dash out before the door closes
and race the lift up the stairs with Rachel to meet it at the top. This is works
fine mostly but is not so easy in the multi storey car park I sometimes use, where
the stairs and the lift come out on a different floor on different sides of the
car park. I nearly managed to lose all the children this way as they escorted
Rachel up the stairs and came out somewhere else. They actually found the car
before I did. Fortunately, I have not yet lost my hundreds of pounds worth of
shopping in this complicated lift system. Now that really would be
uneconomical.
