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The Great Squeeze: Cost of Living Crisis 2022

rob666 said:
...and don't forget the butchers.
Used to be a skilled well paid trade, then Tesco came along...wiped out my two local butchers with special offers at the local "Express"... all offers vanished when the local butchers went...together with the skilled mans rate of pay in the supermarket.
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Not at all defending Tesco, but Express stores tend to have a tiny 1-2 bays maximum of Protein range. It's always prepacked and usually quite expensive. Their pricing strategy is nationwide and, although they do sometimes do targeted clubcard offers, they never ever do on the shelf deals locally. The offers in every Express store is the same nationwide and won't be localised to a certain location. In terms of meat, an Express store simply can't compete with a nearby butchers like larger stores can. If your 2 local butchers closed down, I can almost guarantee you it wasn't Express stores that did it.

Speaking of butchers jobs, with my previous job we were always recruiting them. No matter how much we paid or how many apprenticeships we offered, we just couldn't get them. A skilled butcher was the hardest job in the store to fill.
 
Having done lengthy gardening work for one of the butchers mentioned, he was adamant that the meat offers in the express were "main store" offers that were not usually offered in express and metro stores.
When the express store opened a couple of hundred yards from his long established shop, he lost a large number of customers to the new store "offers" that he could not compete against on price.
He lasted another couple of years.
After he shut up shop, the cheap "big store" meat offers vanished, only express small packets, mainly at full price.
The local butchers get rarer, but we have plenty of new barbers shops, with knocking shops above.
All the rage apparently, and completely legal.
 
I've never known for a new store (convenience, town centre, supermarket or hypermarket) to have lower prices unique to that location. The shops will have various profiles which determine which lines are ranged, and the lines ranged for each profile will change over time.

Your butcher friend might feel like he was forced out of the market but it's very unlikely that anyone at Tesco was pulling levers to do that - much more likely that either that line was deranged from that store profile (indeed most convenience locations have lost the value ranges in the last few years to drive profitability) or the store profile was changed, which again is totally normal for a new location as they try things to get the range right.

No idea why I'm the man standing up for Tesco, but calling it as I see it.

BigT said:
I don’t take your point on not being realistic though, was it last year (or maybe the year before) that the Labour Party voted through increasing minimum wage to £15 per hour at conference? If employers NI was abolished and this added to wages then a minimum wage of £15 per hour is not unrealistic or necessarily going to lead to a huge jump in inflation even if costs were passed on to the end customer.
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What the flip does what the Labour party previously proposed have to do with this discussion?
 
Perhaps the store profile was changed after the two local butchers were driven out of business.
The other local trade death was the local newsagent.
He had the lottery monopoly, but then the rules changed and Tesco got that as well.
The final straw was when the local paper gave Tesco their papers for free on a desperate circulation boost.
He quit within months.
 
rob666 said:
Perhaps the store profile was changed after the two local butchers were driven out of business.
The other local trade death was the local newsagent.
He had the lottery monopoly, but then the rules changed and Tesco got that as well.
The final straw was when the local paper gave Tesco their papers for free on a desperate circulation boost.
He quit within months.
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The profile might have changed, but it won't have been set to be generous or expensive, it will have been geared towards the socioeconomics of the area. There are Tesco Expresses which do the full line of packed sandwiches (4/5 bays) and have a very small selection of raw ingredients, there are others where the inverse is true. A Tesco Express in the middle of a student neighbourhood in Sheffield by neccessity must offer a fundamentally different range to a branch in Lytham.
 
WillPS said:
There are Tesco Expresses which do the full line of packed sandwiches (4/5 bays) and have a very small selection of raw ingredients, there are others where the inverse is true. A Tesco Express in the middle of a student neighbourhood in Sheffield by neccessity must offer a fundamentally different range to a branch in Lytham.
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Yep the one I go to in central London near work has a huge selection of sandwiches, crisps and snacks. But almost no raw meat or ingrediants to prepare dishes with. Its designed for lunches, parties at work (booze and pringles) and small amounts of things you might need quickly. As you say an Express store in a more residential area would offer more meat and similar.

The other issue for the butchers would be that a "tradition" corner shop would stock relativly little fresh meat and similar, they do more long-life goods and the risk of fresh food spoiling is too high. Whereas supermarket convience stores (including Spar & Nisa, not just Tesco/Sainsbury's) offer a much larger range. So if a shopping parade used to have a corner shop, butcher and green grocer, it could all be replaced with one convience store.
 
Yup, we lost exactly that, adding a second butchers and the newsagent.
We now have four barbers, a bookies and a vape shop, as well as Tesco Express.
And if they profile the meat to the stores, my local Tesco would only sell cheap mince and value sausages.
How long have we been security tagging packets of steak?!
 
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WillPS said:
What the flip does what the Labour party previously proposed have to do with this discussion?
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You were implying that a large minimum wage increase wasn’t being realistic yet it was / is the policy of the official opposition so therefore is a realistic proposal.
Anyway the topic has moved on so as will I.
 
rob666 said:
Yup, we lost exactly that, adding a second butchers and the newsagent.
We now have four barbers, a bookies and a vape shop, as well as Tesco Express.
And if they profile the meat to the stores, my local Tesco would only sell cheap mince and value sausages.
How long have we been security tagging packets of steak?!
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It's not an individual thing. When I worked at a little JS in Sheffield there were about a dozen. Our profile was something like 'Neighbourhood - Student' and the one down the road in leafy Nether Edge was 'Neighbourhood - Aspirational', our store stocked 'basics' beans, pop, cornflakes, cleaning stuff and had the cheap ready meals, over there the lowest tier on most things was the standard 'Sainsburys' one and their ready meals had more of the 'Taste the Difference' range. I think the ones in town were on a profile called something like 'City - on the go'. I've almost definitely got those names wrong but you get my drift.

Those profiles are then further refined to individual stores to reflect their size, as well as to add on ranges like 'world foods' (imports).
 
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Rob said:
Fuel prices remain high, energy bills are going up, meanwhile BP and Shell are seeing bumper profits in the billions of dollars. That does not sit right at all.
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Yes it's crazy, they really should be forced to lower there prices for a short while to help people. It's ridiculous. I know they are trying to phase out fuel but when people are struggling to get to work to earn money to feed there kids sometimes it's the only option.
 
WillPS said:
It's not an individual thing. When I worked at a little JS in Sheffield there were about a dozen. Our profile was something like 'Neighbourhood - Student' and the one down the road in leafy Nether Edge was 'Neighbourhood - Aspirational', our store stocked 'basics' beans, pop, cornflakes, cleaning stuff and had the cheap ready meals, over there the lowest tier on most things was the standard 'Sainsburys' one and their ready meals had more of the 'Taste the Difference' range. I think the ones in town were on a profile called something like 'City - on the go'. I've almost definitely got those names wrong but you get my drift.

Those profiles are then further refined to individual stores to reflect their size, as well as to add on ranges like 'world foods' (imports).
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Yeah it's very diverse. When I worked in a certain businesses ill fated convenience chain many moons ago, we categorised the stores as such:

Price - Either Price Sensitive, Standard, or Affluent. This dictated which tier of range we had, more Savers in PS, loads of Best and Organic in affluent.

Location - Either Neighborhood (with ranges for bigger shops like bigger packs, bigger household ranges etc), Urban (aimed at smaller baskets and impulse more) and On The Move (tiny non food ranges, masses and masses of sandwiches and drinks etc).

Seasonality - Standard (large seasonal ranges mainly), Tourist (big chilled drinks, impulse ice creams small seasonal) and Student (small baby and grocery range, bigger ready meals pizzas, booze and sold things like electricals and a small home range, small seasonal).

All three of those would allow all sorts of weird combination's of stores. Going from Price Sensitive, Neighborhood, Standard was completely different to an Affluent, Urban, Student.

Reviews of the store price categories did happen, for instance many stores where moved to price sensitive or normal during the 2010's when local areas faced hardships, such as a store I worked in went to Price Sensitive after a local factory closed.

As for the meat question, it's common practice to security tag meat and cheese as it gets nicked and sold around pubs and independent shops. Everyone thinks of booze, electricals and health and beauty products etc but in Urban locations it's cheese, meat, large confectionery, chewing gum, coffee and even medicine's that grow legs and walk out the door. It's not the common misconception that it's hungry people when the economy goes south either. It's almost always related to drugs (which you could argue is an issue itself caused by poverty long term). If it can be sold on, it gets nicked.
 
JAperson said:
Yes it's crazy, they really should be forced to lower there prices for a short while to help people. It's ridiculous. I know they are trying to phase out fuel but when people are struggling to get to work to earn money to feed there kids sometimes it's the only option.
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I detest BP and always try to avoid their forecourts. They are like a plague which takes over other forecourts, then whacks up the prices and sticks a fancy M&S food on it at triple the prices of a normal outlet. Even the ones without a M&S are way overpriced while their fue prices are some of the highest anywhere.

I would rather go to a Shell than BP. Their fuel tends to be a bit cheaper as do their shops. And while the VPower is stupidly expensive it is the better of all the premium super unleaded on offer.

These companies don’t care about their customers, only the share holders.
 
Exactly what happened here Gary about five years ago...just by the butchers that closed down!
Most expensive petrol in town, and always a long queue for the till because of all the bloody food shoppers with two baskets!
 
JAperson said:
Yes it's crazy, they really should be forced to lower there prices for a short while to help people. It's ridiculous. I know they are trying to phase out fuel but when people are struggling to get to work to earn money to feed there kids sometimes it's the only option.
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The tory government won't force them to lower the price, as they get the fuel leviy and vat on each litre of fuel.
And to get even more money they have made using red diesel (5%tax) illegal for horticulture use.

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Playing Devil's advocate, BP did actually lose about £5 Billion in 2020 so they could argue that they needed this year's profit to make up for earlier losses. And there's no way that they would voluntarily give the government billions of quid just to help the general public out. They've got shareholders and other potential investors to impress.

However, due to this being the way of things, the government could and probably should have hit the likes of Shell & BP with some degree of windfall tax like France and some other countries have done.

Unfortunately, forcing these big companies to hand over billions of pounds to the public is no way for a senior British politician to get themselves a 'non executive director' job at one of these corporations a few years after being out of government.
 
GaryH said:
These companies don’t care about their customers, only the share holders.
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Oh believe me I know that.
delta79 said:
The tory government won't force them to lower the price, as they get the fuel leviy and vat on each litre of fuel.
And to get even more money they have made using red diesel (5%tax) illegal for horticulture use.

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Yeah I know about the Red Diesel thing. Seems odd to me but without a doubt they'll be making loads. Hence why they are never going to reduce taxes on it or make the big companies bring the money down.
 
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