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Daily Record

Lifestyle

Rachel Williams

'I shopped Morrisons price cuts for my groceries and it was a difficult experience'

Morrisons Rachel Williams Hovis

With fuel bills rising and food bills consistently getting higher, the thought of doing the weekly shop can be that bit more daunting than before.

Which is exactly why shoppers have recently been switching up their shopping habits. From shopping around for cheaper prices to buying only value branded products, our weekly spending habits have certainly changed in the last few months.

And, in a bid to help retain customer loyalty, many supermarkets are also slashing the prices across popular shopping essentials to help keep costs low.

One such supermarket is Morrisons. The UK's fourth largest supermarket announced its Price Cuts campaign which has seen prices across 500 products slashed in-stores and online.

The campaign has seen reduced prices on a variety of household essentials, ranging from food and drink to cleaning and baby products.

Despite recently announcing the price cuts, the supermarket chain has also been under fire recently, as it was voted the UK's most complained about supermarket. Most of the complaints seemed to take aim at the supermarket's deals and savings.

Shopping writer,Rachel Williams, decided to give the supermarket a chance by trying to get her weekly shopping from their recently announced Price Cuts campaign.

Here is how Rachel got on:

Since their Chief Executive said that the supermarket had been listening to customers who are concerned with budgeting and value for money, I wanted to see if the campaign was worth the hype and would save me pennies.

Heading to my local Morrisons on King Street, Aberdeen, with nothing more than a mission and my reusable shopping bags, I decided to see if I could get my weekly groceries for less through their Price Cuts.

A lot of fresh fruit was included (Rachel Williams)

First things first, as soon as I entered Morrisons, there were multiple huge signs promoting their latest pricing campaigns. Huge promotional posters highlight the items that you can pick up for less - some of them even put together a list of ingredients for your breakfast, lunch and dinner meals.

Like many promotional schemes, you will find the items included by a unique sticker. Morrisons Price Cuts could be found by a red sign sticker with yellow scissors and the "Price Cut" logo. Despite seeming like an eye-catching sign, I did find that the price cuts were actually quite difficult to spot in-stores.

While I can usually zip round the supermarket with ease, I found that trying to spot the items that had been reduced in-stores a lot more difficult than I expected, and ended up with me walking up and down the aisles quite a few times.

Which is why I did try and start at the front of the supermarket and work my way through the aisles. That meant starting at the fresh fruit and veg, which was right at the start of the shop.

The Price Cuts signs can be spotted dotted throughout the shop (Rachel Williams)

Luckily, I managed to find myself some grapes, peppers, raspberries and carrots. Which I won't complain at, as many supermarkets tend to reduce their frozen fruit instead.

I was pleasantly surprised to pick up 175g packs of raspberries for £1.75 compared to the usual £1.99, and a 400g pack of wonky grapes for 85p instead of 99p. Luckily the fruit section was well signposted, with the Price Cuts being easy to find.

Once I headed to the chilled section is when things got a little bit more difficult. Despite the vast amount of meat types in-store, I didn't find that there were many included in the promotional scheme.

From their adverts, I did know that I could get a 250g pack of mince that had been reduced to £1.79 from £1.89 - which is exactly what I managed to find.

The only other meat that I could pick up for my weekday dinners was a 1kg pack of Woodhead chicken pieces for £5.19, instead of £5.25, Granted, it was quite a good bargain, as I managed to separate the pack into quite a few different batches for different meals.

I managed to find that most of the reduced items were on bottom shelves (Rachel Williams)

I also found that finding a carton of fruit juice that had been reduced was also quite the task. None in the chilled section were included within the campaign, despite their adverts confirming there was indeed orange juice that had been reduced. I eventually managed to find a carton Savers orange further down their drinks aisle for just 55p.

Next up on my list was picking up some cupboard staples, such as pasta, rice, pasta and curry sauce. It was here that I noticed most of their Price Cuts were featured on the bottom shelves and on all their own-branded items. I did manage to snap up a 500g jar of Bolognaise sauce for just 65p and a Tikka curry sauce for just 89p. At under £1 for both large jars, I realised I could make quite a few meals for much less.

The one thing that did take me by surprise, was the fact that none of their pasta had been included in the reduced campaign. Granted, pasta is already a fairly cheap product, so it wasn't a huge surprise. That being said, considering quite a bit of their rice was included, it did take me that little bit by surprise.

While I now had a few essentials for creating some dinners, I decided to try and find a few things for lunches. I sadly missed out on the eight-pack of Greenside sausage rolls for £1 as they had all sold out, so I settled for sandwich ingredients. Again, I struggled to find any good sandwich fillers included in the deal, but ended up settling for a 400g pack of chicken from the Greenside Deli for just £1.10. At 40p cheaper than usual, I decided to give it a go.

I then headed to the bakery section to pick up some bread. Despite the amount of bread, wraps, pitta breads etc, I only managed to grab a large Hovis Best of Both for just 99p. Granted, this is one of my favourite bread types, but I still expected there to be a lot more choice for shoppers, especially as the supermarket said the most popular items had been reduced.

Since I was already there, I decided to pick up a 454g jar of Morrisons strawberry jam that had been reduced by 10p to just 79p. That would be me morning toast and jam sorted out.

Out of all the groceries I managed to fill up my basket with, I did find that Morrisons Price Cuts hadn't reduced many of their fresh vegetables. Actually, I didn't manage to find any, but their frozen section had a bit more. Their freezers had a selection of sweetcorn, peas and broccoli florets for less. Personally, I prefer fresh to frozen, but I understand the reason why, as I guess more families would benefit from a larger pack that won't go off as quickly.

The overall verdict

I did manage to get two full bags of shopping - but it was difficult to find a lot (Rachel Williams)

Once I had popped my items through the checkout, I did realise that I had managed to get two big bags worth of shopping. So, there were definitely a shedload of items that you could pick up for much less.

That being said, I did find shopping the Morrisons Price Cuts quit a difficult experience, mainly due to the fact that the reduced items are actually quite hard to spot in store. From being only a select few items in each category to being hidden on the very bottom shelves, it took way longer than it should have to complete a shop for one person. I can't imagine what it will be like to have little ones with you.

And after taking so long in store, I found that I managed to save myself the great saving off just £2.15. It is still a saving? Yes. Will it add up? Probably.

But, I can't help but feel like it was a very difficult experience for quite a small saving. There wasn't a huge variety of different items reduced and a lot of them were hidden at the bottom of the shelves, making them quite hard to spot the first time.

I also should mention that this was not my first trip to Morrisons for their Price Cuts. I had previously been in store a few times that week, but found that most of the items were already gone by the time I arrived. Making it that bit more of an added stress.

Here was my full shopping list: