Edwin's Philosophy. (Booths Supermarkets)

Name: m-i-k-e

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Booths Supermarkets
Date:	11.09.03 (2008 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely quality aware, Not so bad prices, Nice stores

Disadvantages: Small car park

Edwin Booth?s philosophy: Sell the best goods available, in attractive stores, staffed by first class assistants? E H Booth 1884.

Think supermarkets, and most people will think of the usual culprits, Asda, Sainsbury, Safeway, Tesco?.but those privileged enough to live in the North West, near to one, will think ?Booths Supermarkets?.

Not many people have heard of Booths. it?s a family run chain of 25 medium-sized stores. But they are not just stores, they are stores with star quality, if you get what I mean. Where as the ?big four?, are increasingly focusing on price, new store openings, gaining the most market share, and the ownership of the ugly duckling, Safeway, Booths are focusing on the philosophy laid down in 1884 by their grandfather, Edwin Booth.

Booths don?t care about market share, they don?t care about gaining customers through amazing special offers. They care about offering the best possible quality to customers, in the most friendly shopping environment.

So Edwin?s 3 grandsons carry on his philosophy today, and it makes Booths Supermarkets the best quality place to shop.

Where is Booths?

Booths are mainly located in the North West of England, even more mainly in Lancashire, Cumbria and the odd store in and around Blackpool.

I have no Booths store near to me, as I live in Liverpool and we only have Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Safeway, but when we go to stay in Cumbria-The Lake District about four times a year, we shop at the Windermere branch of Booths.

If you go to the Booths website, www.booths-supermarkets.co.uk, you can find your nearest store. But you?ll be lucky.

What about the store?

The Windermere branch has recently been extended to move the in-store café to the front, adding a new bakery and new customer toilets.

As you go into the car park, you can see it is quite small, but there are always spaces available. The trollies are always quickly
emptied out of the bays and taken down to the huge trolly park at the entrance to the store. Speaking of trollies, they are all brand-spankin-new, and you can easily fit a whole weekly shop into them. They are always dry and there is never any rubbish or loose bags in them, unlike my local Tesco.

Walking into the entrance foyer, you are greeted by a lovely display of fresh plants and flowers.
Further into the store, you have the new café and bakery on the left. Coming out of the café is the nicest coffee smell, and it?s always busy, usually with the local retirement age people meeting up for a chat.

Straight ahead you have the chilled section, with milk, cheese and other chilled dairy produce, along with products such as ready meals, sandwich fillers and pizzas, fresh juices etc.
After that is the produce with some of the freshest fruit and vegetables I have seen in a supermarket.

Booths prides itself on the counters it has at the back of the store, especially its cheese counter, which sells every cheese imaginable and some you may even never heard of before. Other counters are butchers counder, fish counter and a deli counter selling loads of really nice ham and salads like coleslaw and pasta.

What else do Booths sell?

Booths also has a wide range of grocery products like cleaning fluids and materials, as well as tinned foods, packet foods and paper products like toilet rolls.

Booths has a ?grind your own? facility, allowing you to grind your own coffee beans, ensuring that they are as fresh as possible. This is very popular with the locals, but they manage to keep it full.
I haven?t used this though, as I cant stand hot drinks.

They sell a good range of top-quality wines, and wine writer Malcom Gluck speaks extremely highly of Booths in his annual book.

Quality

Booths, as I have said, always does its best to get the best quality products into its stores. And even if that
means the price will be higher, then so be it. And it suits me down to the ground. I would rather pay higher prices for higher quality food, wouldn?t you?

Availability.

I have never been a Booths shopper for more than a week, so I don?t know of specific products they sell. There fore I don?t write a list so I haven?t really got experience of Booths availability. But whenever I go in shelves always seem to be fuller than the stores I shop at when im back at home.

Overall

Booths is a small family chain with excellent quality. Families with children may find it hard to do the weeks shopping at Booths but they can usually be found screaming the aisles down at the nearby Morrisons. But if you want top quality gorgeous tasting food, then off to Booths it is.

As I said, visit their website- www.booths-supermarkets.co.uk

Well there you have it, my glowing report on Booths. I hope you found it useful. Please comment and rate it! Thankyou for reading it, Mike xx

Summary: