I got a call during the week from Mark Paul, a journalist with the Sunday Times, who wanted to ask about why I’d largely deserted Superquinn and now do my main shop in Lidl. I would have thought the reason was pretty obvious, but was happy to expand on it for him.

His article, in today’s Business Section, uses me as an example of the sort of shopper Superquinn chairman Simon Burke needs to woo back if he is to “staunch the flow of shoppers” to cheaper rivals.

Maybe he’s right. I was once a slavishly devoted Superquinn shopper, even something of a Fergal groupie. I did all my shopping there and I’m ashamed to admit that I slightly looked down on those who I felt were willing to compromise on quality by shopping in ‘inferior’ places, even if it saved them a few quid.

My desertion of Superquinn was gradual but pretty much total. I still shop there from time to time, but never with a trolley - it’s a place for occasional top-ups if I happen to be passing.

I initially went to Lidl from curiosity but was perplexed by unfamiliar brands, even unfamiliar foods, and found the basic displays and the absence of the high level of service to which I was accustomed disconcerting. I was used to having someone fill my bags, to real butchers and the smell of fresh baked bread, to pretty displays and interesting specials.

But, you know, the stuff I bought in Lidl was pretty good in the main and there were a couple of things I really liked a lot and that I couldn’t get in Superquinn - JD Gross chocolate was the biggie for me. So I went back and kept on trying new things, but was still not doing my main shop there.

The turning point came one day in Superquinn when I just popped in for a few things and half way around looked into a basket that contained bacon, nuts, cheese and some veg and realised that by taking a short trip across town I could not only cut the price of that basket in half but do so without making any compromise on quality at all.

I had this very strong feeling of being taken for a ride. I abandoned the basket, got in the car and pretty much never looked back.

One quote from Simon Burke in the article stands out for me:

“People should feel that shopping in Superquinn is something stylish to do. There should be a feeling that it is a cut above the rest.”

If he wants to woo me and my like back he won’t do it with that thinking.

It’s amazing how quickly you acclimatise to a more basic shopping environment. Once you do it brings all those prettied up and stylish displays elsewhere into sharp focus, you start to see them for what they really are, pointless distractions designed to make you spend more and overlook high prices.

We are after all talking about grocery shopping here. It’s a necessary chore, not a style statement. If I want stylish I can take the €2000-€3000 per year I save by shopping cannily and go in search of it, but I won’t be looking in a supermarket.

Tags: Style, Superquinn
Posted in Shopping Baskets, Wasting Money | 14 Comments »

I am old enough to have sat laughing uproariously at the telly when Geoff Read appeared on the Late Late Show in 1984 talking about his plans to launch bottled water on the Irish market. I thought it was a hoot but obviously doomed to failure, which shows how much I know when it comes to predicting what the market wants.

Like everyone else watching I not only swallowed my words later but swallowed plenty of Ballygowan along with them.

I mention this because I was strolling through the minerals aisle of Superquinn last week when I saw a women pop four quite attractive looking bottles into her trolley. I had to have a look to see what they were and it turned out they were water.

Finé “natural artisan water” to be exact, all the way from Japan according to the label and costing €6.59 per 750cl.

While I reeled from the shock of this, my eyes wandered down to a locked glass case displaying bottles of Bling H2O, encrusted with Swarovski crystals and priced at an utterly mind boggling €44.99 for the same sized bottle.

What amazed me most though was that a perfectly sane looking woman in Kilkenny was casually buying this stuff. I asked some of the staff and it appears that Bling is selling quite well too, if not exactly walking off the shelves.

Now I absolutely realise this isn’t about water, in spite of the flowery talk of volcanic springs and health giving properties. It’s about what carrying one of these, admittedly attractive, bottles says about you.

I have to assume that those who buy them believe they will, as a result, be set apart from ordinary mortals and publicly recognised as having “exquisite taste”, because the Bling website tells us it is so. Or maybe they believe that flaunting their “gourmet” water shows that they are deeply concerned about their health or will pursue quality without regard to such trivialities as price.

I mean they can’t think that it marks them out as gullible deluded fools can they?

It easy to calculate the cost of these relative to ordinary water - you could buy 50 litres of water in Lidl for the same price as one litre of Finé, in the case of Bling you’d need a good sized trailer to take home your 370 litres.

When it comes to calculating other costs it’s not so easy. The discerning folk of exquisite taste who want everything to be natural and pure and high quality might take a moment to think about the environmental impact of getting heavy glass bottles of water from Japan and Tennessee to the shelves of an Irish supermarket, not to mention making them and transporting them for filling beforehand.

All I can say is that I hope that once they have acquired their fancy bottles they take real good care of them and refill them from Lidl, or better still from the tap.

Tags: Bling, Superquinn, Water
Posted in Wasting Money | 10 Comments »

I said when I started posting these reviews that I’d post the lowest rated ones first, but that wasn’t quite true.

This Argentinian Syrah was the lowest rated wine of the evening, but it came not from Lidl but from Superquinn’s under €6 range. When I bought it I asked for a recommendation from this range and this was the one picked out for me.

I admit that I sort of expected this wine to perform quite strongly, in general I’ve found Superquinn is a really good place to buy wine, but I dread to think what the others in their budget range are like if this is the best.

The pity is that it started really well. On the appearance front things looked good, a nice deep colour and a rich appearance, though some people thought it a little cloudy.

It held up when it came to aroma too, with most finding it pleasantly if not outstandingly aromatic with some spiciness (pepper was mentioned) and a nice fruitiness. At this point things were looking very good.

But it totally failed to deliver when tasting started.

Words like hard, astringent and harsh were used, but most people simply found it dull and unpleasant. Comments such as “lacks any kick”, “this is really lame” and “thin and horrible” were typical, though perhaps one comment summed it up like no other: “if this wine was an American woman, it’d be a size 0″.

The wine scored really very low on taste  - there were 1’s and 2’s - and was the only wine of the evening that nobody said they would buy again.

In discussing this wine a couple of people commented on the let down on tasting, given it’s definite promise prior to that, and suggested it might well be that it could improve with age and was too young rather than simply bad.

That may be true, but it’s not much consolation to those who pop into a supermarket looking for something inexpensive and drinkable. I seriously doubt that those who maintain cellars are shopping for cheap wine in Superquinn or indeed in Lidl.

Price: €5.49

Score: 9

Tags: Superquinn, Syrah, Wine, Wine Tasting
Posted in Wine | 2 Comments »