Shopping smarter and don’t care who knows

Back in the neon days of the 1980s the rules were simple: Tesco if times were hard; Sainsbury’s at Christmas; Marks and Sparks if you were well off and drove a British Racing Green Rover and Kwik Save if you were a pensioner or on the dole.

Thankfully those days are gone and shopping in cheaper stores carries much less of a stigma today than it did in the days of mullets and love bites, so much so that Aldi has now overtaken Waitrose as the nation’s sixth biggest supermarket.

At first glance which company is the sixth most successful at selling loo roll and baked beans does not seem that great an accolade but the fact everybody’s favourite German discount chain (sorry Lidl) now has a larger market share than the Royal warrant bearing, free coffee giving middle class standard bearers at Waitrose is significant.

It screams ‘We no longer care if people think we are common because we buy brands you have never heard of, we are saving brass.’

It might just be that 
some have had enough of 
the traditional market leaders - they know who they are - 
not treating customers properly.

For many the act of traipsing round huge soulless megastores where you can by Spiderman underpants along with streaky bacon before queuing for 10 minutes has had its day.

They would sooner traipse around smaller soulless supermarkets and save at least twenty quid in the process.

Some of us simply cannot do without discount chains - me included. On moving from one end of the country to another 18 months ago I was horrified to learn that we would now be living some 21 miles from the nearest cheap and cheerful shop.

Does that mean that I do not care about the quality of the grub I serve up for my family?

No, on the contrary, the money I save on non-perishables can be spent on the slightly dearer but fresher produce at my local butchers, fishmonger and even the farmers’ market.

These days, like many others, I am shopping smarter but now I just don’t care what the neighbours think.