Tightening budgets mean for many people shopping around to get the best deals on a food shop is essential. And as shoppers try to tighten the purse strings many supermarkets are looking at their own ranges to try to tempt people through their doors.
Asda has been pushing its bright yellow packaged "Essentials" range which has won many customers over. Elsewhere Tesco and Sainsburys are among those offering an Aldi price match where they charge the same price as the budget supermarket for a key selection of items.
Even M&S, long regarded fairly or unfairly as the 'posh' supermarket, has come up with its own cut price grocery range. Branding it the 'Remarksable Value' range, many shoppers have taken to social media to praise how the once upmarket shop is slashing the cost of the weekly groceries.
Its new range is offering numerous essentials and the online posters seem to thing they are doing a great job. Some have even vowed to switch from stores such as Sainsbury's to M&S for their weekly shop, reports MyLondon.
Now Dan Wiggins, trending reporter at MyLondon, has checked out what is on offer. And this is what he found.
"Having caught wind of this I felt I had to go and check the range out for myself so I headed down to my local food hall in Finsbury Park to see what all the fuss was about. I decided I'd get the items I needed for a pair of simple recipes, incorporating as many of the value ingredients as I could to make the most of the range. The recipes were a beef and bean chilli with jacket potatoes and a simple slaw, and sausage and broccoli spaghetti.
"Upon walking into the shop I headed for the bread section where I picked up some large white rolls for 95p. I've seen the exact same ones in Tesco before for the exact same price so this was a promising start.
"Soon the bargains started appearing left, right, and centre, with spaghetti for under a pound, eggs for £1 exactly, and eight pork sausages for just £1.50! Beef mince for £1.80 was another steal and as I secured all my veg for the week for just over £6 I started to wonder whether I'd walked into Aldi or Lidl by mistake.
"Gradually though, I became very aware of my surroundings as some more expensive outliers began entering my basket, red kidney beans for 75p felt particularly egregious and £2.75 for 350g of cheddar is pretty hard to take, the 'value' option in the cheese range a £4 block of 550g.
"The total shop ended up coming to £16.19 overall. Whilst there were a few regrettably expensive items, I do feel like the value was approaching what you get at an Aldi or Lidl, and certainly better than your local Tesco.
"What I would warn though is that despite the genuinely great value on the items in the 'Remarksable Value' range, there just wasn't enough variety in that range to make doing an entire shop at M&S a viably cheap option unless you're sticking closely to the basics.
"That said, I was impressed, and it left me certain of one thing - I wouldn't be returning to Tesco for a while.
A Tesco spokesperson told Manchester Evening News its current prices for the items featured are as follows:
- Large white rolls - 80p
- Spaghetti - 23p
- Eggs - £1.15
- 8 pork sausages - £1.20
- Beef mince - £1.79
- Kidney beans - 33p
- Cheddar- £2.65
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