Kill the singing sheep! (Co-Op)

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	Co-Op
Date:	21/06/05 (468 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Location, Opening hours, Fair trade

Disadvantages: Staff, Prices, Clenliness

Picture the scene. It's 10.45pm, a slightly alarmed drew finds that he is on his last ciggy and that he has no milk left for his morning bowl of frosties. What's he gonna do?

Well, luckily enough, from the window of his Victorian tenement he can see a shop known the country over as the Co-op.


What is the Co-op?
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Well that very much depends because there are various different types of Co-op about that could sell anything from a pint of milk to your car insurance right through to the coffin we will inevitably need (unless of course you are cremated, but hey, they can do that too!).

The Co-op (or co-operative movement as its official title is) started many moons ago in an 1844 street called Toad Lane in Rochdale. This was around the time of the Industrial Revolution in this country and people were finding that local shopkeepers were cashing in on the new social change of making profit that was sweeping the nation. Customers were finding that prices were artificially inflated and to maximise profit even further, the shopkeepers were adding 'secret' ingredients like chalk to flour and normal leafs to tea.

So, 28 men set up what they called the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society and opened a revolutionary new shop that would not overcharge its customers and sell good quality goods. The revolutionary aspect of this was that they were effectively pooling their resources and any customer buying from them were effectively adding to this pool and thus became members of the 'co-op' meaning that they would benefit from this resource.

This practise became very popular and similar shops sprung up all over the country. The shops and services we have today were all started under the same principles and although we have many differing co-op services, they effectively all still come under the same banner in the market place and were founded under the same principle laid down by the 28 men in Rochdale.

So, that brings me to what I am going to review here, and that is the descendant from that original shop in Toad Lane, the Local Co-op foodstore. This one in particular in on Paisley Road West in Glasgow's Southside.


What are it's good points?
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Most people have one close to them. They are generally the first port of call to pick up something either missed in the main shop of the week or to go get something that was either forgotten or has inexplicably ran out (my brother would ALWAYS eat every single munch bunch yoghurt by the Sunday night after they were bought on the Saturday......). The particular store I am reviewing is literally across the road. I can nip down during a commercial break, buy something, and be back on my couch before the programme comes back on! You just cannot beat convenience like that (well, the off licence is actually closer but I aint gonna grumble at that!). I would imagine that most of the other stores are similar as they are normally positioned in housing estates rather than in retail parks like the bigger foodstores are tending to do nowadays meaning that it would only be a short drive in the car or walk to get to one rather than travelling farther to get to a 'proper' supermarket. Quite a clever bit of market positioning!!


The range of products, when you take into account the size of the shop, is actually pretty decent. All the major brands are represented in the four isles it has and it also has a sweet section as well as an Alcohol section which does actually have a decent selection of wine on offer. It also has a separate section for their offers of the week and you usually find something worthwhile stockpiling to get around the normally high prices. I find that I usually take advantage of the 3 for £10 offer on bottles of wine (normally Jacobs Creek or Blossom Hill) and 3 for £2 on mix and max multipacks of Kit Kats. They also have a promise that if they do not have a pint of milk in the fridge, you can claim a free one the next time you are in! I have yet to catch them out on this one though to their credit.

One very good brownie point for the chain (which harks back to the original principles it was set up under) is the range of Fair Trade products they sell. For anyone who has not heard of these, they are products that are produced in a way so as not to exploit the people who make them in third world countries. Things like coffee and chocolate through to bottles of wine are covered by this and they are generally of a high quality. They can be a bit more expensive than the leading brands however this is a fair compromise when buying with the knowledge that you are not contributing to the evils that some companies in the Western World commit against people who struggle to survive in terrible conditions to get your cup of coffee to you in the morning.

The opening hours of this store are very flexible. It opens up at 7am (have yet to go there that early so far.....) and doesn't close its doors until 11pm at night, seven days a week. Very handy at 10.45pm when the above situation arises!!

What Don't I like?
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The Staff. I really do NOT find them helpful and they never apologise for the queue and when you ask them to find something for them it feels like you have asked them to most difficult and petty task in the world. I think I have yet to see a smile in the shop! A lot of the time they are quite scruffily dressed, the uniforms are usually dirty and un-ironed and they are prone to have conversations with each other when they are serving customers - I find this SO rude.

The shop can be in quite a mess a lot of the time. The till area's are never cleaned as far as I can see, the floors are normally dirty and a lot of the time, they have cages out on the shop floor just sitting there and it can be quite hard to manoeuvre around them with your basket.

The queues in this particular store can be horrendous. A lot of the time, I can find myself behind about 10 other customers while one solitary member of staff calmly plods through each persons shopping without really thinking or bothering about trying to get another till point opened to help keep up the idea that this shop is all about convenience!

This may be a complaint about only this shop in particular, but its a complaint nonetheless. At the end of the night, the staff put all of their cages, rubbish, pallets and crates out the front of the shop for the lorry coming in the morning to collect. Why is that a problem? Well as I said, this shop is close to my home and is on a main road and at certain times, when the pubs come out, the local hoodlums like to have fun with them and 5 nights out of seven, I can hear a crash bang wallop and yip, the stuff is all over the place. Now it can be hard to park my car here sometimes, and these things are placed next to a part that I COULD park however I simply will not do this for fear of them being pushed into my car and causing no end of damage. This causes me to have to park my car quite far from my door sometimes and I find this unacceptable. I have mentioned this to them but they take no notice of this at all.

The Adverts. I know this is not to do with the store in question but I HATE them! If anyone has missed them they consist of animated animals who are given human characteristics who proceed to sing about the shop to the tune of long forgotten pop songs that should have stayed forgotten in the first place.

And last but not least, the prices. It is expensive. I would say that on average, its at best about 5% more expensive and at worst, about 20%. I accept that because the stores are smaller the distribution costs will be higher and therefore the price of the convenient nature of the stores will be apparent at the checkout, however I do think its a bit much to charge over a pound for a tub of butter you can get for about 70p in Asda!


So there you are. Despite the complaints I have about the shop, I do use it daily simply because it is across the road and is a lot easier than getting in the car and going to a bigger, less expensive, cleaner, friendlier store. So therefore I AM going to recommend it to potential buyers but I am only going to award it 2 stars as I feel (having worked in a supermarket for 3 years in a past life) they really should do something about the staff and the cleanliness of the stores.

So all that is left to do is to thank you for reading and as always, any comments are welcomed!


drew

PS - The shop I have reviewed is in the Southside in Glasgow)

(historical information sourced at http://www.cooponline.coop/about_intro_origins1.ht ml)

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