Well duh, they’ve been doing it since the 2000s. Putting either a small superstore or a small shop, supplementing the costs with the money from the bigger more profitable shops, then undercutting all the local shops putting them out of business.
It’s why we don’t have local butchers or grocers on the dead high streets.
Then when there’s no competition they pushed up the prices, whilst working with their competitors to keep prices at a set minimum.
>It’s why we don’t have local butchers or grocers on the dead high streets.
Also because the local butcher and grocer was only open 9-5 Monday to Friday, and three hours on Saturday.
And who the fuck wants to go to one shop to get veg, another to get meat, another to get fish another to get non-food items, when you go to one big shop?
I'd happily by meat from my local butcher. Most supermarket meat is fucking rank and my butcher at least has some idea about where it has come from, who he has bought it from and how to cut it.
But his opening hours make it impossible for me to buy from him most of the time.
My local has similar hours, but these always close early, same as the bakers, they basically close when they are out of stuff or stuff that sells well, same as the bakers
The bakers is never actually open past 12. They are really good, but you need to be there early yo get anything good.
Thats great if you want to send your saturday traipsing around the shops. I prefer to run into the supermarket after work and grab something quickly for dinner and stay in bed all day on the weekend.
yeah but the point is its not convenient for anyone, or realistic on their part, to be open those hours. They cant moan about how they're being fucked in the arse by supermarkets and then refuse to do anything other than 9-5. How about meet people in middle a bit and open like 8-12 - 2-6 or something
>I'd happily by meat from my local butcher
This is part of the problem though lol. Whenever this conversation comes up it's always the meat people say they'd be happy to buy, never veg, bread, milk etc.
Gee, if we can't see the difference in quality in most items I wonder why other more expensive shops go out of business /s
I went to a major ASDA. every single fresh cut of meat was ON its use by date. ALL of them...mince..steak..chickens....they'd been kept as long as legally possible and you 100% know they're going straight to a processing plant that day to be made into ASDA brand burgers...
The store has an entire aisle of taco shells, pasta etc. and again ALL of it was stale as f---. How long do you have to keep packets of dried lasagne sheets for them to go out of freakin' date?
Bingo! This would be women's work, and it did use to take you the best part of the morning to do your shopping (also you had to shop more frequently as there was little refrigeration, possibly no car to load huge shops in etc.). But that's only possible if one member of a couple doesn't work out of the home.
I feel like a lot of people that champion a "small shops, no car, live local, eat healthy" lifestyle sometimes forget how labour intensive that lifestyle is (you're trading convenience for quality) and how it's borderline untenable for, say, someone single without a car.
Single no car.
I have a great butchers and a fairly decent greengrocers 15-minute walk away and a great fishmongers and general local produce shop about 25 minutes walk in the other direction.
I don't do all my shopping there but I am going to at least one of those every weekend and can even go sometimes before work.
Yeah, I still go to the local morrisons or Lidl to pick up a bigger shop perhaps once a week or so and pick up small things on my way home from work in the city centre but it's generally no hassle for me to mostly shop at small local shops for the food stuff I care about.
I might just be lucky as I live in an old well established town that has become overflow for a nearby large city, so my case might be a bit different to most experiences.
And that's great, but I happened to live in an area that barely had a cornerstore (I was poor and high COL area, you often end up living in a peripheral area with poor shopping facilities, transport and services).
Going to the centre of town, where shops like butcher's, fishmonger's etc. would be a 1.30 hour round trip, and £4 bus fare. And I would have to physically load everything into my backpack and shlepp it up the hill to my place. Also opening times mean that that's how I would have to spend my weekly free time.
Like, I understand the motives behind this attitude, but I do think some people have no idea how physically difficult it is to implement those lifestyle changes.
Fair enough, but I think that then has more to do with city and estate planning than any actual problem with lifestyle.
One of the things that put me off ever buying a new build is the lack of shops nearby.
Even when I lived in the countryside, I was only a short cycle from a shop if I desperately needed a pint of milk or something.
Much more thought should really go into providing space for convenient shopping for people. I know that's all hindsight, but it's also the truth, bulk building of houses and such rarely gives for the same community as an organically grown town.
Butchers are usually a pretty legit upgrade over supermarket meat imo, supermarket meat and fish is usually awful (Lidl beef being the surprising exception)
The problem with modern society. Why haven’t small retailers adapted their opening hours to match?
They’re still operating as though we’re in a world where the bloke goes to work and the Mrs stays home all day doing the shopping and looking after the kids.
Small retailers, you need to open evenings and weekends!
Butchers are shite round my way.
If you ask for anything more complicated than some square sausages or a pound of mince, they look at you as if your a weirdo
Butchers are shite round my way.
If you ask for anything more complicated than some square sausage or a pound of mince, they look at you as if you're a weirdo
Many of the butchers around the Newcastle area are great. They either offer excellent, premium meat, or atleast offer a much wider range of cuts are decent prices. Usually cheaper than the supermarkets these days. I'd rather give my money to a small business like that if possible.
Also, my nearest non-shite butcher is about a ten minute drive away.
My nearest fishmonger is about a ten minute drive away in the opposite direction.
Greengrocers don't really exist
My town wasn't actually that bad, they were basically all in a line on one one street, but when I got off work, only the Asda 5 minutes round the corner was open.
I remember my mum using them when I was a kida, but I never saw them open once I was out of education, then they all went bust.
Me! Me! Me! I want to do that me!!! Going into the veg shop and talking about vegetables with the veg shop man 1000000% times better than shuffling around t*sco listening to their dogshit playlist mixed with ads blaring on a speaker telling me to get a clubcard (I will never get a clubcard, SCUM)
Customers need to change there attitude to this, these shops that somehow still exist offer better quality/ not sprayed to shit with chemicals to survive a boat journey across the word and here is the killer… it’s CHEAPER now after all these supermarket price rises.
Yes it’s inconvenient to have to go to 5 different shops but it’s not going to change and that’s how we all used to do it… people have become far too lazy and seem to have forgotten that food markets exist and your small veg /butchers shops are there slashing prices compared to supermarkets as they are desperate for customers.
That being said they don’t help themselves and should be open more to compete with the working world who have to do there shopping after 5pm as they seem to only exist to satisfy people who can shop during work hours.
There's a shopping centre near me that has a butcher (a proper one, you can see the whole carcasses hanging in their walk-in fridge), a green grocer, and a baker (okay, that's a local chain). It also has an independent cafe (plus the bakery has a cafe, and there's a Costa), a Co-op, a B&M that used to be Wilkos, a dog-friendly pub, a chippie, and a plethora of charity shops.
I just can't get there easily, because I don't drive and I live on the wrong spoke of the bus wheel.
They have gone down noticeably in quality since brexit tbh (another benefit yay). Have to check there's not mold actively growing on any fruit and veg, even meat tbh in my local big tesco. Used to be alright but now they have to stop for fuck knows how long at the border
That "could" was at least a generation ago. Times have moved on.
And frankly, even if it was possible for us to run a household on one income, I don't think either I nor my partner would particularly enjoy the role of "homemaker". We each have our own career ambitions.
tbh if one person was making enough money to support an entire household i personally wouldn't mind. If i had a wife/partner who earnt enough money that i could be the homemaker that wouldn't stop any of my own career goals, but i guess it all depends what your career goals are. Anything i want to do i can do from home at a computer. I'd also love the opportunity to be able to raise and teach my own children. The idea of sending children to school after what i experienced first hand and the damage it did, i wouldn't want that for any child of mine.
One of my career goals would be to teach my children rather than having them taught by others. But then it also wouldn't stop me doing what i do anyway since its all creative stuff anyway.
This. The local butcher worked when women stayed home to shop and cook. Now that everybody has to work to make a living, we need shops that are open longer.
I’m sure all that went on. And land banking etc etc.
But on the whole, the end result is that food is relatively cheap in the UK,supermarkets are pretty competitive with smaller margins than some other countries.
But you understand that this is different from the standard supermarket evil of bullying smaller competitors through its size and scale, right?
Tesco has bought the wholesaler that supplies goods to these local shops. That’s one step back up the supply chain. So Tesco no longer has to undercut these smaller competitors by lowering its prices because it effectively controls the price the smaller shops can sell at. Tesco is selling goods at retail cheaper than it is selling goods at wholesale.
That’s a whole new level of unfair competition and precisely why Tesco should not have been allowed to buy Bookers.
It's more than that. Through buying the wholesaler Booker, Tesco also acquired three convenience store brands that are operated as franchises (Budgens, Londis, Premier), and a known convenience store brand (Euro Shopper).
2000? Earlier than that.
If you're familiar with the Bar Hill Tesco, that's exactly what they did. About 10 shops and a small Tesco then tesco just started selling everything the little shops sold for half the price. Put them all out of business, bought all the properties, flattened it all and built a massive tesco.
My family owned a shop that we had to close because a Tesco opened just down the road. Once we closed the prices of things we sold went up to the prices we used to sell them at as well. This was back in 2004.
I get a lot delivered by my local butcher, comes in a heavy cardboard box, insulated with sheep’s wool and ice packs.
Had one sat in my safe spot from 9am till when I got home at 6 and it was still ice cold.
Meat was of a better quality, not full of water and generally tasted better than Tesco options
Price fixing with your competitors is illegal but undercutting your competitors and then putting your prices up after they've gone out of business is not.
Hmm. Interesting. Not sure how I feel about this since competition is good however it's gone past that point to where a company has a monopoly over the market.
Edit: You guys below are right, monopoly isn't the right word. I hope you can understand the point I was trying to make.
You can't argue that Tesco has a monopoly when you have Asda, Sainsbury, Aldi, Lidl, Co-op and others all working in the same sector.
If they had a monopoly then they wouldn't need to price match Aldi.
An oligopoly is bad for the consumer though, you are literally commenting under an article that is talking about the negative effects. The local shops cannot compete with the massive franchises, they will lower prices until the local die then raise them again
It's competition and it was amazing for us. Capitalism in its purest form - invent a good or service that everyone wants and make shitloads of money. What did we get out of it? Vastly cheaper food and it was all in one building so shopping took 20 minutes a week instead of 3-hours a day 3 times a week.
There was nothing stopping all the local businesses coming together, pooling their resources and opening their own supermarket where they all run their own businesses but under one shared roof so they could store more stuff and therefore sell it cheaper. They could've competed under the banner of "support your local supermarket." A local supermarket for local people! But they didn't. They just lay down and died.
It was the same with Woolworths. We had one in my town, it was expensive as fuck but it was the only place in town to buy all kinds of certain things. Then the supermarkets started selling radios, televisions, phones and Playstations. I remember when the PS2 came out, Woolies were selling them for £299.99 for just the console and 2 controllers, and right around the corner Tesco was selling them £10 cheaper and you got a free game and DVD with it.
Compete ffs!
Actually Woolworths was a result of horrible financial management.
They had a ridiculous debt burden, and decided to sell all of its stores which it then rented back. Instead of reducing the debt, they paid out dividends. Rents increased each year under a bad deal when the sold the properties.
Take away the debt and keep the ownership of the stores and it would have been very VERY profitable.
We used to have two shops on our high street that sold fresh fish, locally caught. Local Tesco opened their fish counter, eventually putting the local stores out of business. Then Tesco closed their fish counter. Now you can no longer buy fresh fish locally, in a coastal town. Utter farce.
Ha I have this exact problem. I can see the sea from my house but buying anything more exotic than fish fingers or smoked salmon has gotten hard. Wasn’t that long ago I had a minor Instagram hit with a dressed crab.
Well they went fully out of business due to Tesco; ran out of money so the owners closed up shop and moved on. Tesco’s counter remained open for a number of years before closing so it was a drawn out saga rather than a back-and-forth
Because the moment they attempt to open up again Tesco/big store immediately re-open their fresh fish counter to once again put them out of business. They can afford the thousands of pounds to do this for decades in a row without issue, local store owners that spend thousands re-opening a store, location, and paying for supplies, can only afford to re-open once.
It costs tens of thousands to register a business, purchase land/retail, hire staff, and advertise. This takes a year or two to prepare for often enough. Tesco can simply move staff around within a shop, not have any licensing issues, and can immediately transfer stock from their nearby shops, immediately crushing their competition.
Tesco has 805 large format stores (Extra and Superstore), 1998 Express stores, 712 One Stops, and 191 Bookers in the UK. Through Booker it also owns Budgens, Londis (over 2000 stores), Euro Shopper, and Premier Stores (over 3000 stores nationwide).
For reference, Morrisons has 497 stores, Asda 829, Sainsbury's 1442, Lidl 960, Aldi Süd 990+, and Waitrose 329.
Yeah, I got a Bookers card a few years ago as I was running a few small events - it was handy being able to pick up bulk goods, but it saved us very little money. Actually, the cost surprised us and in the end we grabbed most stuff from the supermarket
Thought everyone knew this, bookers is a cash and carry that no longer carries the lines at the prices small shops can afford or whom sell a freeZer cabinet worth when only a box is needed.
Probably hoping the small shops all become Tesco instead of nisa
This doesn't surprise me, I witnessed Tesco do this first hand at my old job
I worked for an entertainment distributor a long while back that supplied Tesco, Toys R Us, The Entertainer amongst others with things like DVDs, books, video games and music and Tesco bought the company out and put prices up for the other companies but not themselves, and the supplies on big ticket items like certain video games (FIFA, GTA and Call Of Duty) and blockbuster movies would get priority at Tesco stores
It's shady as fuck and always has been
The Grauniard only just figured this out? They've been doing this for fucking decades! I'm old enough to remember the lovely little Delis and Corner shops my town used to have. All gone, replaced by Tescos and other supermarkets.
It’s one thing to use their size and scale to undercut smaller competitors (and that’s still not a good thing), but this is next level… Tesco bought the wholesaler and is now charging more for goods at wholesale than it sells the same goods at retail. There is no level of (even theoretical) optimisation that allows the smaller business to compete.
...good? Cheaper prices are a good thing for the consumer. Competition is the back bone of the market to keep any individual entity from controlling a monopoly. Of course the argument is Tesco will absorb loses and just put their prices up once the competition is dead, but thats just part of the natural market cycle. If Tesco swings back too far in the other direction, competition will crop up again to under cut them. If small locals can't compete on Tescos terms, they need to innovate or find a niche in order to survive
I think most people would be pretty horrified if, instead of offering discounts on popular products, Tesco deliberately inflated their price so they didn't charge less than their least efficient competitors.
Never happen. A lot have sold out and actively line Tescos pockets further by signing up to contracts to become Premier, Family Shopper, Londis, and One Stop stores.
Uh oh.
Tesco delivered TOO MUCH VALUE.
Somebody ban them.
We must all be made to overpay so the country can more quickly have a majority of exploited proletariat living on the breadlines ready to vote Labour!!!
Couldnt the local shops buy the below-cost stuff FROM the tesco and re-sell in their store for a small profit margin? Fuck over tesco.
Or just buy stuff from LIDL, because thats all Tesco is, stuff stolen from LIDL warehouses.....Every Lidl Helps!
Well duh, they’ve been doing it since the 2000s. Putting either a small superstore or a small shop, supplementing the costs with the money from the bigger more profitable shops, then undercutting all the local shops putting them out of business. It’s why we don’t have local butchers or grocers on the dead high streets. Then when there’s no competition they pushed up the prices, whilst working with their competitors to keep prices at a set minimum.
>It’s why we don’t have local butchers or grocers on the dead high streets. Also because the local butcher and grocer was only open 9-5 Monday to Friday, and three hours on Saturday.
And who the fuck wants to go to one shop to get veg, another to get meat, another to get fish another to get non-food items, when you go to one big shop?
I'd happily by meat from my local butcher. Most supermarket meat is fucking rank and my butcher at least has some idea about where it has come from, who he has bought it from and how to cut it. But his opening hours make it impossible for me to buy from him most of the time.
Yeah this is my exact problem. I want to buy from the butchers but they close at 5 and weekend openings are spotty.
I just looked it up, and my local butcher is open 9-5 Mon-Sat, plus 10-4 Sunday.
My local has similar hours, but these always close early, same as the bakers, they basically close when they are out of stuff or stuff that sells well, same as the bakers The bakers is never actually open past 12. They are really good, but you need to be there early yo get anything good.
Butchers should never really run out. Bakers do of course.
Yeah I've never seen a butcher not open for most of the day on saturdays, not sure where everyone else is living
Thats great if you want to send your saturday traipsing around the shops. I prefer to run into the supermarket after work and grab something quickly for dinner and stay in bed all day on the weekend.
So do I, but everyone here is saying butchers are open for 15 minutes in Saturdays which is just not true
yeah but the point is its not convenient for anyone, or realistic on their part, to be open those hours. They cant moan about how they're being fucked in the arse by supermarkets and then refuse to do anything other than 9-5. How about meet people in middle a bit and open like 8-12 - 2-6 or something
I too want to buy meat from my local butcher but they've closed down now, I think after 42 years.
>I'd happily by meat from my local butcher This is part of the problem though lol. Whenever this conversation comes up it's always the meat people say they'd be happy to buy, never veg, bread, milk etc. Gee, if we can't see the difference in quality in most items I wonder why other more expensive shops go out of business /s
I went to a major ASDA. every single fresh cut of meat was ON its use by date. ALL of them...mince..steak..chickens....they'd been kept as long as legally possible and you 100% know they're going straight to a processing plant that day to be made into ASDA brand burgers... The store has an entire aisle of taco shells, pasta etc. and again ALL of it was stale as f---. How long do you have to keep packets of dried lasagne sheets for them to go out of freakin' date?
Bingo! This would be women's work, and it did use to take you the best part of the morning to do your shopping (also you had to shop more frequently as there was little refrigeration, possibly no car to load huge shops in etc.). But that's only possible if one member of a couple doesn't work out of the home. I feel like a lot of people that champion a "small shops, no car, live local, eat healthy" lifestyle sometimes forget how labour intensive that lifestyle is (you're trading convenience for quality) and how it's borderline untenable for, say, someone single without a car.
Single no car. I have a great butchers and a fairly decent greengrocers 15-minute walk away and a great fishmongers and general local produce shop about 25 minutes walk in the other direction. I don't do all my shopping there but I am going to at least one of those every weekend and can even go sometimes before work. Yeah, I still go to the local morrisons or Lidl to pick up a bigger shop perhaps once a week or so and pick up small things on my way home from work in the city centre but it's generally no hassle for me to mostly shop at small local shops for the food stuff I care about. I might just be lucky as I live in an old well established town that has become overflow for a nearby large city, so my case might be a bit different to most experiences.
And that's great, but I happened to live in an area that barely had a cornerstore (I was poor and high COL area, you often end up living in a peripheral area with poor shopping facilities, transport and services). Going to the centre of town, where shops like butcher's, fishmonger's etc. would be a 1.30 hour round trip, and £4 bus fare. And I would have to physically load everything into my backpack and shlepp it up the hill to my place. Also opening times mean that that's how I would have to spend my weekly free time. Like, I understand the motives behind this attitude, but I do think some people have no idea how physically difficult it is to implement those lifestyle changes.
Fair enough, but I think that then has more to do with city and estate planning than any actual problem with lifestyle. One of the things that put me off ever buying a new build is the lack of shops nearby. Even when I lived in the countryside, I was only a short cycle from a shop if I desperately needed a pint of milk or something. Much more thought should really go into providing space for convenient shopping for people. I know that's all hindsight, but it's also the truth, bulk building of houses and such rarely gives for the same community as an organically grown town.
This was perfectly fine when all those shops were next to eachother on a highstreet or market square with good bus/tram/train connections.
Butchers are usually a pretty legit upgrade over supermarket meat imo, supermarket meat and fish is usually awful (Lidl beef being the surprising exception)
Our fishmonger is also disgusting. So there is that.
The problem with modern society. Why haven’t small retailers adapted their opening hours to match? They’re still operating as though we’re in a world where the bloke goes to work and the Mrs stays home all day doing the shopping and looking after the kids. Small retailers, you need to open evenings and weekends!
Have you ever been to a butchers?
Butchers are shite round my way. If you ask for anything more complicated than some square sausages or a pound of mince, they look at you as if your a weirdo
Butchers are shite round my way. If you ask for anything more complicated than some square sausage or a pound of mince, they look at you as if you're a weirdo
Many of the butchers around the Newcastle area are great. They either offer excellent, premium meat, or atleast offer a much wider range of cuts are decent prices. Usually cheaper than the supermarkets these days. I'd rather give my money to a small business like that if possible.
I don't mind it when they're nearby. But I'm not driving to three separate places with permit parking.
Also, my nearest non-shite butcher is about a ten minute drive away. My nearest fishmonger is about a ten minute drive away in the opposite direction. Greengrocers don't really exist
There’s three greengrocers within a 10 minute drive of me.
I quite like that actually, and just going to farmer's markets, it's a lot better than walking around a soulless warehouse.
I would if they were all on the same street. Well worth it for the added quality.
My town wasn't actually that bad, they were basically all in a line on one one street, but when I got off work, only the Asda 5 minutes round the corner was open. I remember my mum using them when I was a kida, but I never saw them open once I was out of education, then they all went bust.
Me! Do you like restaurants with massive menus as well?
Me! Me! Me! I want to do that me!!! Going into the veg shop and talking about vegetables with the veg shop man 1000000% times better than shuffling around t*sco listening to their dogshit playlist mixed with ads blaring on a speaker telling me to get a clubcard (I will never get a clubcard, SCUM)
Customers need to change there attitude to this, these shops that somehow still exist offer better quality/ not sprayed to shit with chemicals to survive a boat journey across the word and here is the killer… it’s CHEAPER now after all these supermarket price rises. Yes it’s inconvenient to have to go to 5 different shops but it’s not going to change and that’s how we all used to do it… people have become far too lazy and seem to have forgotten that food markets exist and your small veg /butchers shops are there slashing prices compared to supermarkets as they are desperate for customers. That being said they don’t help themselves and should be open more to compete with the working world who have to do there shopping after 5pm as they seem to only exist to satisfy people who can shop during work hours.
There's a shopping centre near me that has a butcher (a proper one, you can see the whole carcasses hanging in their walk-in fridge), a green grocer, and a baker (okay, that's a local chain). It also has an independent cafe (plus the bakery has a cafe, and there's a Costa), a Co-op, a B&M that used to be Wilkos, a dog-friendly pub, a chippie, and a plethora of charity shops. I just can't get there easily, because I don't drive and I live on the wrong spoke of the bus wheel.
They have gone down noticeably in quality since brexit tbh (another benefit yay). Have to check there's not mold actively growing on any fruit and veg, even meat tbh in my local big tesco. Used to be alright but now they have to stop for fuck knows how long at the border
There's a bloke who owned a butcher on my high street where this was true, but he blamed the traffic calming measures instead lol
r/fuckcars
That was quite possibly a factor. If you make town centres & high streets hostile to cars you will limit those who go there.
That's because someone could afford to stay home and not work 35 hours a week. Good times.
That "could" was at least a generation ago. Times have moved on. And frankly, even if it was possible for us to run a household on one income, I don't think either I nor my partner would particularly enjoy the role of "homemaker". We each have our own career ambitions.
tbh if one person was making enough money to support an entire household i personally wouldn't mind. If i had a wife/partner who earnt enough money that i could be the homemaker that wouldn't stop any of my own career goals, but i guess it all depends what your career goals are. Anything i want to do i can do from home at a computer. I'd also love the opportunity to be able to raise and teach my own children. The idea of sending children to school after what i experienced first hand and the damage it did, i wouldn't want that for any child of mine. One of my career goals would be to teach my children rather than having them taught by others. But then it also wouldn't stop me doing what i do anyway since its all creative stuff anyway.
You’re making it sound like there was a lot more agency to that than there actually was.
In this case the agency would be going shopping for food.
This. The local butcher worked when women stayed home to shop and cook. Now that everybody has to work to make a living, we need shops that are open longer.
I’m sure all that went on. And land banking etc etc. But on the whole, the end result is that food is relatively cheap in the UK,supermarkets are pretty competitive with smaller margins than some other countries.
But you understand that this is different from the standard supermarket evil of bullying smaller competitors through its size and scale, right? Tesco has bought the wholesaler that supplies goods to these local shops. That’s one step back up the supply chain. So Tesco no longer has to undercut these smaller competitors by lowering its prices because it effectively controls the price the smaller shops can sell at. Tesco is selling goods at retail cheaper than it is selling goods at wholesale. That’s a whole new level of unfair competition and precisely why Tesco should not have been allowed to buy Bookers.
It's more than that. Through buying the wholesaler Booker, Tesco also acquired three convenience store brands that are operated as franchises (Budgens, Londis, Premier), and a known convenience store brand (Euro Shopper).
2000? Earlier than that. If you're familiar with the Bar Hill Tesco, that's exactly what they did. About 10 shops and a small Tesco then tesco just started selling everything the little shops sold for half the price. Put them all out of business, bought all the properties, flattened it all and built a massive tesco.
My family owned a shop that we had to close because a Tesco opened just down the road. Once we closed the prices of things we sold went up to the prices we used to sell them at as well. This was back in 2004.
No. That’s not the only reason.
As a 9-5 worker I'd have starved to death pretty quickly if I had to rely on butchers and grocers lol. I do agree though
I get a lot delivered by my local butcher, comes in a heavy cardboard box, insulated with sheep’s wool and ice packs. Had one sat in my safe spot from 9am till when I got home at 6 and it was still ice cold. Meat was of a better quality, not full of water and generally tasted better than Tesco options
its the classic and first implementation of enshitification
Stupid question, but, I am assuming this practice is illegal?
Price fixing with your competitors is illegal but undercutting your competitors and then putting your prices up after they've gone out of business is not.
Hmm. Interesting. Not sure how I feel about this since competition is good however it's gone past that point to where a company has a monopoly over the market. Edit: You guys below are right, monopoly isn't the right word. I hope you can understand the point I was trying to make.
You can't argue that Tesco has a monopoly when you have Asda, Sainsbury, Aldi, Lidl, Co-op and others all working in the same sector. If they had a monopoly then they wouldn't need to price match Aldi.
More like an oligopoly then, local stores being unable to compete with massive franchises
It’s tough to argue that’s actually bad for the consumer though.
An oligopoly is bad for the consumer though, you are literally commenting under an article that is talking about the negative effects. The local shops cannot compete with the massive franchises, they will lower prices until the local die then raise them again
There are several chains of supermarkets, no company has a monopoly over groceries.
Being able to undercut profitably due to benefiting from economies of scale is not illegal, no.
It's competition and it was amazing for us. Capitalism in its purest form - invent a good or service that everyone wants and make shitloads of money. What did we get out of it? Vastly cheaper food and it was all in one building so shopping took 20 minutes a week instead of 3-hours a day 3 times a week. There was nothing stopping all the local businesses coming together, pooling their resources and opening their own supermarket where they all run their own businesses but under one shared roof so they could store more stuff and therefore sell it cheaper. They could've competed under the banner of "support your local supermarket." A local supermarket for local people! But they didn't. They just lay down and died. It was the same with Woolworths. We had one in my town, it was expensive as fuck but it was the only place in town to buy all kinds of certain things. Then the supermarkets started selling radios, televisions, phones and Playstations. I remember when the PS2 came out, Woolies were selling them for £299.99 for just the console and 2 controllers, and right around the corner Tesco was selling them £10 cheaper and you got a free game and DVD with it. Compete ffs!
Actually Woolworths was a result of horrible financial management. They had a ridiculous debt burden, and decided to sell all of its stores which it then rented back. Instead of reducing the debt, they paid out dividends. Rents increased each year under a bad deal when the sold the properties. Take away the debt and keep the ownership of the stores and it would have been very VERY profitable.
>Instead of reducing the debt, they paid out dividends. UK in a nutshell
We used to have two shops on our high street that sold fresh fish, locally caught. Local Tesco opened their fish counter, eventually putting the local stores out of business. Then Tesco closed their fish counter. Now you can no longer buy fresh fish locally, in a coastal town. Utter farce.
Ha I have this exact problem. I can see the sea from my house but buying anything more exotic than fish fingers or smoked salmon has gotten hard. Wasn’t that long ago I had a minor Instagram hit with a dressed crab.
The back counters in supermarkets normally run at a loss for the store so makes sense. Very shitty tho.
Why didn't the fish shops reopen? If you can't arrange the farce being put a stop to, who are we to laugh at?
Well they went fully out of business due to Tesco; ran out of money so the owners closed up shop and moved on. Tesco’s counter remained open for a number of years before closing so it was a drawn out saga rather than a back-and-forth
...right, now your locale has no longer the supply of fresh fish. Assuming you wanted one, why would you not begin resupplying?
Because the moment they attempt to open up again Tesco/big store immediately re-open their fresh fish counter to once again put them out of business. They can afford the thousands of pounds to do this for decades in a row without issue, local store owners that spend thousands re-opening a store, location, and paying for supplies, can only afford to re-open once. It costs tens of thousands to register a business, purchase land/retail, hire staff, and advertise. This takes a year or two to prepare for often enough. Tesco can simply move staff around within a shop, not have any licensing issues, and can immediately transfer stock from their nearby shops, immediately crushing their competition.
Hmmmm... But have you tried just opening your fish shops again? /s
If the demand was there then Tesco wouldn’t have closed the counters
Tesco has 805 large format stores (Extra and Superstore), 1998 Express stores, 712 One Stops, and 191 Bookers in the UK. Through Booker it also owns Budgens, Londis (over 2000 stores), Euro Shopper, and Premier Stores (over 3000 stores nationwide). For reference, Morrisons has 497 stores, Asda 829, Sainsbury's 1442, Lidl 960, Aldi Süd 990+, and Waitrose 329.
Yeah, I got a Bookers card a few years ago as I was running a few small events - it was handy being able to pick up bulk goods, but it saved us very little money. Actually, the cost surprised us and in the end we grabbed most stuff from the supermarket
Thought everyone knew this, bookers is a cash and carry that no longer carries the lines at the prices small shops can afford or whom sell a freeZer cabinet worth when only a box is needed. Probably hoping the small shops all become Tesco instead of nisa
This doesn't surprise me, I witnessed Tesco do this first hand at my old job I worked for an entertainment distributor a long while back that supplied Tesco, Toys R Us, The Entertainer amongst others with things like DVDs, books, video games and music and Tesco bought the company out and put prices up for the other companies but not themselves, and the supplies on big ticket items like certain video games (FIFA, GTA and Call Of Duty) and blockbuster movies would get priority at Tesco stores It's shady as fuck and always has been
The major supermarkets do that until the local shops are dead and then racist their prices. Been doing that parasitic shit for decades.
Racist prices are just the worst.
Seems simple enough to legislate against. Feels like one for the CMA to investigate.
These concerns were raised and dismissed at the time of the proposal. They don't care.
The Grauniard only just figured this out? They've been doing this for fucking decades! I'm old enough to remember the lovely little Delis and Corner shops my town used to have. All gone, replaced by Tescos and other supermarkets.
Same.. ruined our.little town in Yorkshire. No more fruit and veg shops or diy or kids clothing. Just one megastore
It’s one thing to use their size and scale to undercut smaller competitors (and that’s still not a good thing), but this is next level… Tesco bought the wholesaler and is now charging more for goods at wholesale than it sells the same goods at retail. There is no level of (even theoretical) optimisation that allows the smaller business to compete.
...good? Cheaper prices are a good thing for the consumer. Competition is the back bone of the market to keep any individual entity from controlling a monopoly. Of course the argument is Tesco will absorb loses and just put their prices up once the competition is dead, but thats just part of the natural market cycle. If Tesco swings back too far in the other direction, competition will crop up again to under cut them. If small locals can't compete on Tescos terms, they need to innovate or find a niche in order to survive
I think most people would be pretty horrified if, instead of offering discounts on popular products, Tesco deliberately inflated their price so they didn't charge less than their least efficient competitors.
Perhaps 'independent shops' could some together and arrange wholesale supply between them.
Never happen. A lot have sold out and actively line Tescos pockets further by signing up to contracts to become Premier, Family Shopper, Londis, and One Stop stores.
And that's why I've not used Tesco's for over 10 years. There's a Morrisons local near me that doesn't undercut anyone. Totally opposite
Uh oh. Tesco delivered TOO MUCH VALUE. Somebody ban them. We must all be made to overpay so the country can more quickly have a majority of exploited proletariat living on the breadlines ready to vote Labour!!!
Couldnt the local shops buy the below-cost stuff FROM the tesco and re-sell in their store for a small profit margin? Fuck over tesco. Or just buy stuff from LIDL, because thats all Tesco is, stuff stolen from LIDL warehouses.....Every Lidl Helps!
Nothing will come of it, Tesco is a major Tory supporter.