How 'product shrinkage' increases prices by stealth

Take a look at these two bottles. The one on the right - bought a few months ago - contained 500ml of red wine vinegar. The significantly smaller one on the left, which my husband just picked up from Tesco for £1.23, has only 350ml.

I'm pretty sure I paid around £1.19 for that larger bottle which worked out at 24p per 100ml. The new size works out at 35p per 100ml - a whopping increase in a short period.

I can't for the life of me see why we should pay so much for vinegar. French supermarkets have it at a fraction of the price. In many branches you can't even buy an own brand vinegar now though I notice from mysupermarket.co.uk that Asda has a 350ml bottle for 67p - that's 56p a bottle cheaper than the Aspall branded one.

Product shrinkage has of course been going on for a while but it seems to me it's got way more prevalent recently as this report from Which? last year suggests. I've noticed fewer teabags in some of the packets I buy, for example. Have you spotted any incredible shrinking products lately?

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In what way is a tub of cheese sauce 'essential'?

Coming back on the ferry from France yesterday I spotted two full page ads promoting Waitrose's budget 'essential' range and how easily you could run up a ham and leek pasta bake with it.



Most of the ingredients were fair enough. A pack of penne, a pack of sliced ham and a couple of leeks (though £2.70 a kilo isn't particularly cheap) but then I spied not one but two 350g tubs of ready-made cheese sauce at £1.59 each which would bring the cost of the dish to well over a fiver.



OK, I get where Waitrose is coming from - we're all short of time these days but how long does it take to make a cheese sauce? Particularly if you use the Delia all-in-one method which couldn't be easier. And which instead of costing you £3.18 would probably work out just over £1, even allowing for the fact you'd have to buy a pack of cheddar.



The fact that Waitrose is spending so much promoting this way of cooking also underlines how determined supermarkets are to wean us off low value basic ingredients and onto 'value added' ones. By implying we don't have the time or knowledge to make a cheese sauce they undermine less experienced cooks' confidence in their ability to make a meal from scratch and make them spend more than they need.



I don't know about you but I think that's a shame.



PS another thing that's odd. How come the recipe has a five star rating when no-one appears to have rated or commented on it? Just askin'.

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How does Sainsbury’s Feed Your Family for £50 campaign stack up?

Can you feed your family healthily for £50 a week? That’s the question Sainsbury’s is posing in an expensive new advertising campaign which is plastered all over the papers today.

Obviously they wouldn’t be spending this kind of money if they didn’t think it would be profitable for them but could you stick to the Sainsbury’s meal plan which you can find on their website here?

I was one of three food writers The Guardian asked to contribute to the debate - in the ‘yes you can’ camp. As the comments below the posts from readers show it is doable though I have reservations as to how many families who are not already living on that kind of budget could manage. As I said in my post it’s not only a question of what you buy but whether you can persuade your family to eat it - and to eat round the table at the same time. And how used you are to cooking meals from scratch.

Now that I’ve seen the meal suggestions in detail I have to say it looks more appealing than I thought - a good deal better than the details one reader posted by mistake from a similar Sainsbury’s offer that was made several years ago which included bought meat pies and canned beef and vegetable soup.

Whoever has devised the plan has managed to cram a surprising amount of fruit and veg into the weekly budget though I haven’t scanned it in enough detail to see how they’ve worked out the costings. If they’ve costed carrots for example pro rata they must be assuming that people would by them loose which I’m not sure the majority would do. It’s managing to use up the food you buy that really saves you money.

There are also some imaginative suggestions. Whizzing up bananas with your breakfast milk to make a banana flavoured milk to pour over your cereal is a great idea as is sprinkling cheese on bread crusts and grilling them to make cheesy croutons for a tomato soup.

There are some surprisingly unfrugal suggestions though like putting on the oven just to roast some tomatoes for breakfast, using ready-made tomato and stir fry sauces rather than making your own with a can of tomatoes or using soy sauce and failing to use the carcass from Sunday’s chicken in some way to make a meal for Monday or Tuesday.

I’m not sure it stands up from a health point of view either. Recommending toast and jam as a suitable breakfast for hungry teenagers three days a week doesn’t seem particularly good advice. In fact I’m not sure how a strapping teenage boy would survive on these relatively meagre rations. And surely it would be better to serve more veggie options than dish up cheap frozen sausages twice a week?

There are also many ingredients that you could buy cheaper than the price Sainsbury’s is charging for them. Most market stalls and a fair few shops would charge less than 80p for a cucumber, for example.

Obviously the week’s plan will come in on budget if you stick to it - but that’s a big if. My guess is that Sainsbury’s is hoping that you won’t.

What do you think of Sainsbury’s menu plan? Do you reckon it’s possible to feed a family of four for £50 a week and what would be your best tips for economising?

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Check your till receipt!

This afternoon I found I'd been short-changed by Tesco on a special offer. It's the second time in a month that's happened - that I've been aware of although there may well have been other occasions.

I bought a couple of packs of herbs on a 2 for £1 offer instead of their normal price of 82p and 79p but the full amount was rung up at the till. I thought the total was more than I expected and checked the receipt. When I took it back I found that I'd been overcharged 61p.

A similar thing happened the other day at Somerfield on a 2 for 1 deal on kitchen towel.

I'm reluctant to conclude it's deliberate - I can't think supermarkets would be so stupid as to consciously swindle their customers. Putting a positive construction on what happened there are so many special offers these days it must be hard to make sure they all get accurately logged onto the system. But had these purchases been part of a larger shop rather than a small one I suspect I wouldn't have noticed. It would be easy enough to slip by.

So I suggest, if you don't already do so, you keep track as far as possible of what you're spending and scrutinise your receipt carefully before you pay or leave the shop.

Do you have a similar experience of being overcharged?

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Another supermarket pricing rant

I was going to blog about the two fabulous old cookbooks I picked up for a song in Devon last week but this week has been so manic I'll have to content myself with whingeing - once again - about supermarket pricing which almost matches MPs expenses claims for its deviousness.

My husband who was cooking supper last night doesn't really believe in veg so I nipped down the road to get some from Tesco (Yes, groan) We were having grilled mackerel and I fancied broccoli and it was on special offer so that seemed the perfect solution. Except for the fact that even with 20p off it cost 79p.

I know this is absolutely par for the course but occasionally you stop and think that that is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a small head of broccoli for two (particularly if you paid the full price). Since when did it cost nearly a £1 to produce and transport a non-organic, mass-produced vegetable? (Not that I'm sure the grower got anything like that). No wonder we're unhealthy in this country when basic veg cost as much as this. It certainly explains why Tesco continues to earn billions a year and is thinking of setting up its own bank. It's certainly got plenty of money to lend.

Anyway my new quick trick with veg like broccoli is to part stir-fry, part-steam them in a frying pan. I sweated off a sliced leek for a few seconds, added the broccoli florets (the stalks will go into a soup), stir fried a couple of minutes with a little fresh garlic then added half a glass or so of water and stirred and tossed until the broccoli was tender (about another 2 minutes), adding a slosh of light soy sauce at the end.

I also added a tiny handful of living salad leaves from the plants I bought a couple of weeks back. Unorthodox but there were too few to make a salad and the effect was rather nice, like adding a scattering of herbs. One pot is looking rather sickly though. I've either watered it too much or too little . . . Any thoughts?

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Sneaky supermarket pricing strategies

Remember a time - not so long ago - when the standard advice on how to save money on fruit and veg was to buy them loose? And that the best bargains were on the bottom shelf? I've trotted those tips out myself more times than I care to mention but have to tell you now they're out of date.

Pre-packed veg can be cheaper than loose ones. The best bargains can be at eye-level.

Here's an example from Somerfield just now. Loose potatoes, sold down on the bottom shelf are £1.65 a kilo or 75p a lb. (That's not new potatoes which are £2 a kilo) If you buy a pack of four, which I'm guessing would come to about 800g, they're only 90p. Even organic potatoes, sold at eye-level at £1.03 a kilo, are cheaper.

How on earth does this make sense? Well, for what it's worth, my hypothesis is this. Potatoes are a staple - people don't have to be encouraged to buy them. Supermarkets (or rather their suppliers) are taking a hit on the special offers they're doing so they need to make it up somewhere else. They want a minimum spend on lines like potatoes so they want to encourage you to buy a pack rather than the amount you actually need.

None of which is good news for pensioners and other people on a budget who are living on their own but since when have the supermarkets cared about them?

You will almost certainly find potatoes - and other veg - more cheaply if you go to a street market, greengrocer or farm shop but if you're buying them in supermarkets be on your guard!

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Watch the prices of goods supermarkets are NOT promoting!

At first glance food prices seem to be easing with every shop offering dramatic discounts, particularly on those items that people will be looking for over Christmas. (Like smoked salmon) But have you noticed how the cost of items they're not promoting has been shooting up?

Yesterday, for instance, I found small (150g) pots of plain yoghurt selling in Somerfield for 74p - only 16p cheaper than the large pots. But many people living on their own wouldn't need a large pot. And now everyone's jumping on the Aldi bandwagon of having six fruit and vegetables at a knock-down price all other fruit and veg seem to be costing far more - including the quite ludicrous price that supermarkets charge for a tiny pack of fresh herbs.

It goes to show just how important it is to know what things normally cost and keep your wits about you when you shop. Have you spotted any examples of excessive price rises?

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Latest salvo in the supermarket price war

Back to Blighty yesterday to be greeted by a full page ad in the Times (and probably other papers too) publicising Sainsbury’s ‘Big 5’ deals on fruit and veg. Which bears more than a fleeting resemblance to Aldi’s weekly fruit and veg promotion, the Aldi Super 6.

Could it be that the big boys are getting rattled by the migration of an increasing number of newly budget-conscious customers prepared to give the discounters a go? I suspect it could. According to recent figures from the market research company TNL Aldi’s sales increased over 20% in the 12 weeks to the 15th of June, giving it its highest ever share of the UK grocery market at just under 3%. Those sales have to be coming from somewhere.

How good are the Sainsbury’s bargains though? Well, as usual, a mixed bag. No-one could complain at 49p for a melon (20p less than Aldi’s) or 39p for a bag of radishes but new potatoes still sound expensive at 89p a bag (it doesn’t specify the weight)and berries may or may not be good value depending on whether you’re paying the 99p or £1.99p mentioned in the ad. Half price, as I've pointed out before, is not such a big deal if the price was excessive in the first place.

To put that in perspective here’s a list of prices my fellow blogger Signe Johansen spotted at the North End Market in London last weekend:

2 pineapples for £1
2 v.large bunches bananas for £1
9 lemons for £1
2lb cherries for £1
2 punnets of blackberries for £1
8 perfectly ripe apricots for £1
1 large watermelon for £1
3 galia melons for £1.20
2 large aubergines for £1

And some of you have pointed out even better bargains outside London.

So let’s have a ‘bargain of the week’ contest. Whoever comes up with the best deal this week gets a signed copy of my book The Frugal Cook when it’s published next month! Fire away . . .

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Supermarket price wars - good news or bad news?

Being slightly out of the loop over in France the latest round of supermarket price cuts had passed me by so thanks to regular contributor career misfit for dropping me a line to point them out.

At one level it's obviously good news that the big four are reacting to the low prices being charged by Lidl and Aldi but canny shoppers will need to be careful. In my experience what supermarkets offer with one hand (usually at the expense of their suppliers) they take with another so for every bargain you spot watch out for a price rise. As I pointed out recently it wasn't so long ago that Tesco, to take one example, was charging over £1 for a single red pepper. Of course any 'reduction' looks brilliant by comparison.

We've been here before with 20p loaves and 9p cans of beans, attention-grabbing offers on which supermarkets are happy to take a loss to entice you through their doors. Fine if you just snap up the bargain. Less good if you meander through the aisles randomly picking up other bits and pieces without keeping a sharp eye open as to whether you're being overcharged for them. If grapes are just 50p for 500g for example as they were at the weekend at Asda what price are they charging for raspberries? (Actually I've just checked that. £1.98 for 170g or £11.65 a kilo which proves my point . . .)

It's also worth remembering (at the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs) that supermarkets don't automatically have the best prices. I'm sure I could beat the £1.88 that Morrisons is apparently asking for 454g of strawberries according to the Daily Record and if you're seriously trying to cut back why buy rump steak even if they're only charging £8.98 a kilo for it?

It's getting to the stage where you need a degree in maths to go shopping.

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You can put stuff back . . .

Strayed temporarily from the path of righteousness by visiting Waitrose this afternoon, not a store I would normally look for bargains but my neighbour had told me they were selling packs of frozen mackerel fillets for £4.99 which sounded a good deal. Needless to say it wasn't the only thing I bought . . .

On the credit side I picked up a couple of pork chops for tonight's supper for just £2.12 and a fresh fruit salad reduced from £3.36 to £1.39, enough for two meals.

On the debit side I couldn't resist two gorgeous cheeses including an interesting Cornish Brie I hadn't seen before which came to £5.77 (ouch!) and a special offer on Fudge's flatbreads on the slender pretext that they would be 'useful research' for my next book which is on cheese.

The total bill with various other bits and pieces (mostly justified) was £39.20 which is EIGHT times the price of the mackerel 'bargain'. In Waitrose terms I suppose that's not bad - there are so many utterly tempting foods in there that it would be easy to spend at least twice that amount but I can't say I feel particularly proud of myself.

Except for this. It would have been £8 more expensive if I hadn't put back on the shelf a bunch of asparagus, two packs of rhubarb (on special offer but overpriced) and a large pot of parsley which we almost certainly wouldn't have used before we go away next week.

So a 'eureka moment'. Even if the goods are in your basket you haven't spent that money until you've passed through the checkout. You can put stuff back . . .

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Half price but how good a saving is it?

There's a full page ad in the Guardian (and probably other papers) today showing the massive savings that Sainsbury's is offering on fresh fruit. Save £2, it trumpets, on strawberries which are down from £3.99 to £1.99 this week or £1.69 on nectarines down from £3.39 to £1.69.

Now don't get me wrong, Sainsbury's if you're reading this. I'm sure these fruits have been on sale at the higher price over the last few weeks. In fact the small print at the bottom of the page tells you exactly when those prices were charged. The question is was that a reasonable amount to charge at the time for fruit that was only just coming into season and, probably in the case of stone fruits like plums and apricots, as hard as a rock? As I pointed out yesterday you can buy a can of apricots that taste as good for just 24p.

If you look more carefully at the cherry offer you'll also spot that the not-so-special offer of £1.99 is for only 300g of cherries. I paid 68p a quarter pound (110g) in my local greengrocer the other day which works out at £1.85 for 300g and I'm sure he hasn't got a fraction of the buying power of Sainsbury's

Oh, and if you're looking for these products in a Sainsbury's Central or Local you may not find these reductions anyway. Not all stores stock these lines at these prices, the company is careful to state (again in the small print).

Sainsbury's of course is not the only supermarket which does this kind of promotion. As I remarked yesterday on Beyond Baked Beans Tesco is currently offering fresh peppers for 32p each which looks like a fantastic reduction from the 88p they were charging a couple of weeks ago (or indeed for the £1 plus I saw them charging back in April or May) but in effect amounts to no more than that we're finally being asked to pay a reasonable price for produce for which we've previously been charged well over the odds. About time, but no great cause for celebration.

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New supermarket opening - a chance to stock up!

A new branch of Somerfield has opened down the end of the road. A bit of a let down really - it's not much more than a glorified off-licence but because they want to attract custom they've dropped leaflets round the area with a 10% off voucher for the opening week.

We went down and loaded up with basics like olive oil, coffee, kitchen towel and loo paper plus a huge block of cheddar for £1.99 which I was in two minds about buying as we're away again next week. But it was only 10p more than a block half its size so I now have to make our diet cheese-focussed for the next four days in order to use it up. Will report back on how it goes.

Of course the best things to buy are non-perishables you use reguarly such as tinned tomatoes, spaghetti and tuna all of which were on offer at half price.

It's worth keeping an eye out for new supermarket openings. You not only get the benefit of sharp prices in the new store but in neighbouring supermarkets who want to hang on to your custom.

Not that I'll be abandoning my small shops. I'll still stick to them for fresh produce.

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Lidl-land

Thwarted in our desire to support our local shops by the fact that they all seem close on a Monday afternoon (and at lunchtime, of course) we headed off to the recently opened local Lidl.

Lidls and Nettos are popping up all over the place in the south of France. Hopefully they won't take business from the local shops but the dreary Intermarché and Hyper U.

As in the UK, the Lidl experience was a strange mixture of the gross and the really quite interesting. Some pretty horrible cheap meat. A wide and well-priced range of cheese. Some astonishingly cheap Earl Grey tea at .89€ (66p) a pack, some even cheaper Ceylon tea at .55€ (41p) and a pack of espresso coffee at just .99 (74p). And that was by no means the cheapest

Still, nothing much for supper so on down the road to Hyper U which was larger and more depressing - a bit like Asda on a bad day. I did however manage to find some cheap steak (aiguillette) for €4.60 (£3.43) and some belly pork for 6.15€ (£4.59) to eat with beans tomorrow night when we're having our former next door neighbour over for supper.

Bavette - one of my favourite cuts in France (skirt in the UK) - seems to have disappeared off the shelves or have soared in price to around 18€ (£13.43) a kilo which I suppose isn't expensive for steak but galling when you could until comparatively recently buy it for about 12€. I think it's suffered the same fate as lamb shanks which used to be cheap too. Once telly chefs get hold of an ingredient the price invariably goes up. Food in France ain't what it used to be.

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