My local supermarket (Sainsburys)

Member Name: Gromit

Product:	Sainsburys
Date:	23/02/01 (1453 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see opinion

Disadvantages: see opinion

Are you loyal to your supermarket? Or do you just go to the more convenient one? I confess that my shopping habits are really dictated by distance – provided, of course, they have what I want. Since moving to near Warrington I have become a regular shopper at Sainsbury’s. And yes, I do actually do the shopping – at least for food.

How did I end up doing the shopping? I guess when my daughter was born. Before that, my wife and I would usually go shopping together. When she was born though it was just easier if I went shopping and my wife would do some other chore at home. As many of you will know, looking after a child is a time consuming business!

I can tell you what does put me off certain shops - I dislike having to put a £1 coin into a trolley to use it. I know you get it back but it implies that I’m going to do something dishonest with the trolley. I really dislike it. On the other hand – if the £1 paid for a trolley that didn’t wander off in a contrary direction to where I’m trying to push it, that would be a different thing altogether. I may even be happy to pay for it then. But to pay £1 because I might have criminal intentions with the trolley is something I do not like. This is certainly a differentiating factor for me when choosing to shop at the local ASDA (hire your trolley) or Sainsbury’s (free).

So, am I loyal to a particular supermarket? No. I use this one because it stocks what I want and because it’s convenient. Prior to using Sainsbury’s I was quite happy to use Tesco’s and before that it was ASDA. Still, I do enjoy shopping here and it has some very good food and facilitites, which I shall now tell you about.

My local Sainsbury’s in located at 100 Church Street, Warrington, WA1 2TN. The telephone number for the store is 01925 650444. The store is open during the following times:

Monday – Thursday: 08:00 – 22:00
Frid
ay: 08:00 – 24:00
Saturday: 07:00 – 22:00
Sunday: 11:00 – 17:00

The store is what I would class as medium sized – possibly a bit bigger than medium. It was about a year ago that our store expanded in size. It now has a reasonable amount of parking space (540 cars). They have put a lot of effort in to getting parking spaces close to the store for disabled drivers. They also make good provision for shoppers with young children – allowing that all important extra room to open your door. Definitely worth a VU when you are trying to get a small child out of their car seat.

There are lots of other facilitites provided as well. They have a good sized recycling area where you can take your empty wine bottles (lots of these), newspapers, shoes, and other things. Just before you enter the store there are ATM facilities. They have Royal Bank of Scotland, JS and Lloyds. Very handy if you bank with these. Not much use to me because I don’t.

Our store now stocks quite a wide range of food, which I’ll come on to in a minute. A more recent addition, though, is clothes. This section was added during the recent expansion and are through an arrangement with Adams. They also sell computer games, in a collaboration with Electronics Boutique, and DVDs, CDs and videos. I think the prices are high because I buy all of these sorts of things on the internet. However, they are standard high street prices.

Since the expansion, the range of food on offer has improved considerably. This is particularly true for the more exotic ranges. They have a very decent selection of Chinese meals and Indian meals. The Indian meals are sold as ready meals, all pre-packaged, or you can buy from the deli counter. It’s a very good choice and they are very good value for money. There are frequent promotions too – so you can get a nice take-away combination. Another new feature at the hot food section is whole roas
t chicken. They also offer barbeque flavour as well and there are a range of side dishes like onion rings, potato wedges.

The deli also offer the traditional range of cooked sliced meats, quiches, pies etc. along with fresh meat at the butcher section and at long, long last – a fresh fish section. This is great for getting fresh tuna, swordfish, and many others alongside the usual British standard of cod.

The fresh produce section is quite extensive and offers a range of fresh vegetables and fruit. There is also a wide range of salad available and we now have a very good salad bar. This will be very useful at lunchtime where you can pick up a selection of salad-type food (potato salad, coleslaw) to go with a freshly made sandwich.

What I have found very good is the organic section. This started as a very small little offering but now warrants it’s very own stall. It’s still a modest range but it does cover many of the essential vegetables and fruit. As you would expect, the prices are slightly higher but not excessively so. I find I buy more and more from here. The fresh meat counters are okay and offer the usual range of products. However, they do also offer free range chicken and organic sausages.

I mentioned earlier that they have a good range of exotic foods – well, at the end of each of the chilled food aisles they have introduces some excellent exotic things. These are things like fresh sushi ginger (absolutely gorgeous). Lovely exotic mushrooms (dried), pure Canadian maple syrup (stunning on pancakes), specialist olive oils, things from Japan, things from Australia, things from Asia. On my last shopping trip I bought some red curry paste made in Bangkok. It made a superb (a very hot) chicken curry. I like these sections a lot!

The rest of Sainsbury’s is like most other supermarkets. They stock a good range of things in the freezer section. They stock all the usual cerials, tinned food
s and so on and so forth. They also have a good range of wines and each week sees a good range on offer, anything from £1 off to 50% off.

At the moment, they are running one of their promotions for money off petrol (always helpful given its current price). For every £25 you spend, you get a voucher for 1p off a litre of petrol. You can get up to a maximum of 4p off. Given that the petrol prices on the forecourt are already amongst the best prices in town, this makes the petrol offer a very good deal indeed.

On top of this, they also run a loyalty points scheme where you earn points from the money you spend on petrol and food. You can use the points to take cash off your shopping bill or you can convert them to airmiles or for vouchers to go to a range of places, such as Alton Towers. On a number of occasions, I converted mine to airmiles to plan a trip with the family.

At present, Sainsbury’s are supporting comic relief. In fact, they, like many other big stores, support a range of things in the local community. Like many parents, we collected the vouchers for computers for schools. It’s good to see them giving something back.

I do like the way that Sainsbury’s has started to team up with specialist companies. Another recent introduction is food from Pizza Express. I think this is a good idea because it gives the consumer a much better choice. Sainsbury’s also have a very useful website where you can find your local store and check out their opening times.

Sainsbury’s also seem to take note of the consumer’s concerns. For example, most of their own brand tomato-based products are GM free. All in all, I would have to say that I’m very happy shopping at Sainsbury’s.

Summary: