Now theres fancy!
Tesco ditch basic range after admitting shoppers are 'too embarrassed' to buy the blue and white striped products", so sayeth the Daily Mail (four months after everybody else mind you.)
Dai Jakes is going to be a tad extreme here to make a point (the point being that hardly anyone cares who buys what. I might go off on one so thought I had better be clear from the start.)
Why dont the supermarkets just have 'Skint' and 'Not So Skint' aisles? Afterall its what they are doing anyway with these value packages, its just less noticable. Im not being funny (or trolling) here, im genuinely being erm....genuine. People appreciate honesty. Be honest with yourselves, if you see someone pick up a cheap pizza or something, you do think they are struggling. And theres no shame in that, a lot of people are these days. Nobody thinks any less of people who buy the cheaper stuff.
In fact its brand snobs who are thought of with disdain when some are buying them purely because they think its better and some things are not. (Mr Jakes used to be one of them.) I admit that the value meat like sausages can be foul and I wouldn't feed it to a dog but the tinned stuff can be good. Im speaking from experience here because as readers of my other (food) blog will know, I have had 'face offs' between the brands and budget types and quite a few times cheapest came off the clear winner. Soup is a good exaapmle. Some of the pricier soups are like drinking a mug of salt while the budget labels don't pack so much of a sodium punch.
So I dont see a problem with having cheap and pricey aisles because like I say most folks don't think less of others who are putting the budget brands in their shopping trolley. And those that do are fools. (God only knows what they think of me when they see me buying both branded and value groceries when I do my foody based 'face offs'. Laughs Out Loud.)
