I can now afford to shop at Waitrose. And in all honesty, I’m pretty disappointed.
Ever since I started working in London, I visited the John Lewis Food Hall once a week as a special treat.
Whether that be to make a home made curry from scratch, or a slap up pasta dish.
One meal, with good ingredients would probably come to around £10. And I’d look forward to when I could afford to live like this every day.
However, Waitrose have recently introduced a new essentials range.
And now, the same meal costs around £5 or £6. Which for one, is about average across the supermarket industry.
Now that I can actually afford to shop there every day, my weekly treat has lost it’s novelty.
I no longer see Waitrose as that ‘better place to go and shop’.
Of course, offering a lower priced range of food will bring in more custom. But if the Sales Directors up top see this as a positive, then Waitrose might risk turning into ‘just another supermarket’.
And in my opinion, keeping their brand image should be the ‘essential’.
2 Comments
I understand that the ‘essentials’ range gives Waitrose an impression of being cheap etc, however, the essentials brand is merely the products that Waitrose used to sell, repackaged in a similar theme to make them easy to find. It is not a basic or value range.
Waitrose also offers other ranges so that you can treat yourself … have you tried Waitrose ‘Menu’?
Nice to read your blog