Is Tesco coming to town a bad thing?

[sweetheart]

I can't help but see a wider selection of vegetables and fresh foods
from a cook's eyes rather than from a socialist's eyes. The shops on
the high street have crap opening hours from 9-5 minus a generous
lunch and other odd opening weirdness.

The most local supermarkets have terrible fruit and vegetable sections,
that to shop for a natural cooked healthy menu is nigh impossible without
shopping at all local markets.

And then tesco might come to wick (a tiny local town). The newspapers
are in an editorial flurry. People want a traditional high street of
poor selection and bad opening hours.

But i can't help thinking that as a consumer i'll get cheaper petrol,
better fruit and veg selection and blue jeans for 4 quid, 24 hours a
day 7 days a week.

If only tesco could get here faster, that would be better.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

1. There is a dilemma about this: guilt and low prices

There is a convenience about the these new huge Tescos and Asdas that are springing-up over the place with everything under one roof. I do find more often than not you will pay over the odds for certain items and I try to avoid doing my entire shopping at the one place.

There is a Co-op in my town which is small and is a very expensive place to do all my shopping. I end-up just getting certain items of shopping from there (i.e. milk, confectionery, yoghurt, frozen foods) and it comes out OK. I also feel better about shopping at a Cooperative than one of the big retail stores a couple of miles away.

I am also lucky that I have good quality local fruit & vegetable shops, butchers, pizzeria and bakeries in my town for bread, healthy foods, meats and pasteries. They're less expensive and they taste better than any supermaket. Like you I have to be careful about opening times for small shops (they close for Wednesday afternoon here which always catches me out).

[sweetheart]

2. As the household cook

I don't care "where". I need a fennel root to cook a dish and if the
only market is "LIDL" then i'll buy one from Lidl. If Tesco has better
quality fresh herbs, fresh pink grapefruit juice or leechees, i'll go
to wherever i can get them... because my family deserves the best
natural foods, and if the high street can't deliver, then the cook in
me has little sympathy. I'll support whomever can deliver the goods.

But the socialist in me is won over by the cook... and we wrestle
the two of us, one of us wearing a french left bank hat, and the other
out to discover the freshest and most exotic vegetables for the next
culinary experiment.

The cook is by far the more sensible of the two of these split
personalities, as it is sensible. Whereas the socialist will support
mediocrity in the name of living wages and all that malarchy at the
expense of quality food for my family.

It is more than a conundrum... i feel like the high street has taken
advantage by not keeping with best practices and i've little sympathy
when tesco moves in to best them. Aaah... would that waitrose would
open a shop nearby that we might have even a finer selection!!! :-)

[Guy_Montag]

3. It's a tough one,

I tend to shop at large supermarkets, you know you're getting a minimum standard, which I regret our market fishmonger (for example) doesn't provide.

I would shop at a local butcher if there was one near by, but they don't open at the times when I can go shopping. I'm afraid they need to come up to date, in families, both parents tend to work these days, that means people can't shop between 9 and 5. I've never understood why butchers, bakers etc, don't open in the evening, at least a couple of days a week.

[sweetheart]

9. The hours thing

I prefer to shop at night, after midnight when the queues are small
and the shop not cluttered with children. Tesco in inverness is this
way, and has a massive range of things, many organic vegetables and
stock more worthy. And to have this available 24x7 is great.

In the north, there is the scottish coop, somerfield and a safeway in
wick.. or it was a safeway last time i saw it... probably something
else now. Then there are a plethora of local shops, that have a few
bins of strawberries or so, but not enough variety or consistency to
rely on for fruit&veg.

They serve older scottish dietary tastes for tatties and frozen fishcakes, frozen and drab tasting food with too much salt... jaffa
cakes, wagon wheels, tunnocks.. and its easy to understand the weight
gain problem of rural britain when this is combined with cold dark
winters, too much alcohol and cable TV.

Tesco is a bright happy place by comparison to the local shoppes... one
with bins of all sorts of organic produce. There is no organic
greengrocer or anything like it in thurso abouts. Many people know
farmers and barter for a few suedes or so, but that is hardly
consistent food... rather a lovely aside extra.

Petrol is intensely overpriced in thurso, the most expensive in the
UK mainland, and everyone i know is looking forward to tesco's
petrol forecourt. So a 24x7 shop would be so much appreciated by
those of us with weird hours, or who just can't get by shoppes
during the day. I can't believe that the high street has not become
more savvy to compete with this, instead of pretending that it won't
impact them. Tesco will seriously affect this thurso high street
and the other 2 supermarkets in the area... if grocery shopping is
to be seen as zero sum, it's almost like the public shoud vote on
"which" farmers get thier food-tax expenditure... and since a good
many of the local people ARE farmers, why should it not be them.

[Mr Creosote]

4. On balance I'm not sure

We have had Tesco for about 10 years - during which time we have lost 1 of 3 butchers, 1 of 3 greengrocers, and our only fishmonger. On the other hand we have added one bakers. Moreover, I think a lot of tourists and people from out on the Lizard etc don't come into town at all - with the result that 3 prime retail sites in Helston have been empty for a long while.
In terms of fruit and vegetables they are more expensive than in town - and less fresh - because I think they tend to source less stuff locally. Round here the best supermarket for fruit and veg is LIdl because nearly all of it is locally sourced.
Cheaper petrol? Not sure - Tesco in Helston charges 93.9 for Diesel, whereas Shell in Truro charges 90.9.
Against that there is a wider choice - and they have provided a lot of employment locally. But I do regret that the focus of the town has shifted from the town centre to a windswept shed.

[Guy_Montag]

5. The point about petrol is a good one,

I drove across town to use my "4p off a litre" coupon at Tesco, carried on my journey, next petrol station I passed was cheaper than I had just paid - last time I do that. This is masterful marketing - the logic in my brain was: must be cheaper with 4p off a litre, since their petrol won't be 4p a litre more than everyone else, well actually it seems that it was.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. In my town, Adsa is always the cheapest petrol

although Shell usually makes an effort to match it, you can see that it's Asda that determines the prices in any week. And for petrol, there's no "big corporation" vs. "family business", so there are no socialist principles involved.

I find the quality of produce from my local greengrocer is better than Asda, even if the range is slightly less, and on prices it comes out about even; so the greengrocer gets my custom when opening hours allow. I also have the choice of a Waitrose - which should be a good liberal's dream (a co-operative with profit-sharing, and pays a lot of attention to good farming methods etc.), but they can have annoying holes in their product lines (for instance, they have a tiny in-store bakery, but they don't produce simple loafs - just rolls, baguettes etc., so I get bread from the large Asda where you can often get it still warm from the oven - and I've hardly ever lived anywhere where an independent baker could do that. The turnover does help the customer in this case). So I use the Waitrose less than I thought I would, when it opened.

Many American DUers would of course be appalled that I put any custom towards a subsidiary of Walmart. However, I did once find on the net the relative rates of pay of an Asda cashier and a Co-op one, and the Asda one got a tiny bit more. So I don't feel so guilty about that. More guilt-inducing are the stories of how the supermarkets screw the producers.

[Briar]

7. Sadly, Asda is known as a better employer

or so my sister (who works for Tesco and has nothing but amused contempt for their in-store managers - how they make such a profit given such incompetence at that level baffles me) tells me.

Nevertheless, I cannot bring myself to use them, especially as I have a Waitrose within easy distance and a small craft baker, a splendid butcher, two local markets and a farmers' market to support.

[Taxloss]

8. It is a very bad thing.

And here's why:

http://www.tescopoly.org/

[T_i_B]

10. Thank you for this thread sweetheart

I have strongly considered doing threads about Tesco before now, as there are statistics out there to the effect that 1 in every 8 pounds is spent at Tesco's.

Personally, I think that the question of "Is Tesco coming to town a bad thing?" depends on where you live. Here in Chelmsford outside of the pedestrianized, multinational chain stores a go-go High Street we have little else but Tesco's. This has its disadvantages as there is a real lack of small butchers, bakers, fishmongers etc down here. In some places however, a new Tesco is going to be be an improvement on what is already there. And I do shop at Tesco's myself as it is fairly cheap and has a good range of stuff as I'm sure you are all aware.

However, if you want really good produce then the best thing I can recommend is a Farmer's Market!

[Chartist]

11. As a socialist and a cook- yes

To an extent it I guess depends on where you live (though I moved areas a year ago and found the situation much the same), but I can get far fresher and better quality produce from my local shops or the local market than I can ever get from tesco, with a more interesting range to boot. Plus the service is much more friendly and knowledgeable; the local tesco more often than not has unbearably long queues, and I usually find their much-vaunted prices to be disappointing.

So many smaller towns see Tesco's arrive and local butchers, bakers and greengrocers disappear in their wake; what your left with is plenty of chocie, as long as you buy whatever you choose from Tesco- that sure ain't socialism, but it does strike me as having a certain soviet feel to it. Plus their stores are often on the edge of town making life difficult for those of us without cars (the small inner-city ones - and Tesco are buying up smaller stores at an alarming speed in my area - have even longer queues and actually a pretty crap range).

[Anarcho-Socialist]

12. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[tjwmason]

13. Round here it was quite a litteral pain in the arse

And pretty close to a large loss of life - but that's due to local circumstances.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4639671.stm - oh and the 'at least a week' of disruption is still fully in place over a month later.

As others have said - there are certainly up-sides and down sides, but I think that we do have to accept the reality that Tesco (et al.) have exploited a hole in the market in terms of opening hours and levels of quality. The old high-street model was fine when women weren't working, and so could potter round the shops every day - but are ridiculous for most people these days. The levels of quality and price which they provide are only really available because of their massive economies of scale.

Personally, I have strong leanings towards the Prince Charles school of food - our whole system of food production (and especially importation, just so that we can have strawberries in December) is utterly unsustainable - and the creation of that was in large part due to the supermarket chains such as Tesco.

[T_i_B]

14. I've heard about that one

Not a good idea really was it, building a supermarket over a railway line like that.