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Its no secret that what with this Credit Crunch and everything, retailers are fighting tooth and nail for every penny they can get out of us; BOGOF’s, discounts, and loyalty schemes are all over the place at the moment, and across all merchandise categories imaginable. In food, the nature of discounting intrigues me. Why is it that supermarkets are able to offer, say, 3 joints of meat for a tenner on a one week promotion, and then stick the prices back up to a fiver each for the rest of the year? Surely this means that we are being ripped off the rest of the time? I can’t imagine the supermarkets have that many loss leaders, so it can only be that the price of the meat etc is no where near the price we pay for it on an everyday, general, basis? Interesting.
Being Christmas, the current supermarket marketing focus is on Christmas dinner. Christmas dinner is the one and only meal that I, like most, will not compromise on; I always demand sausage meat be stuffed in the bird (I’ve no idea why, since on an every day basis I don’t even eat sausages unless they’re Quorn ones!), my dad always wants lamb as well as cockerel (which we have instead of turkey) and my brother always asks for those devils on horseback things. But since I still go to my mothers for the holiday season, I’ve selfishly ignored the fact that all of these whimsy’s have to be paid for! How much does an average Christmas dinner cost, though?
According to mysupermarket.co.uk, the traditional Christmas meal will cost 7% more at Tesco and Asda this year, at £67 and £64 respectively, with the price of turkeys alone increasing 25.6% per kilo! £65ish is ambitious, by anyone’s standards. I’d say you can bump that up to £20 per head for Christmas 2008, and that doesn’t include the additional types of meat that my family have alongside the bird (at least 3). £20ph is not bad for a 4 course meal - you’d pay double that at a restaurant on the day – but when you consider we will have between 6 and 10 people around the table, it starts to get ridiculous, and discounts become important.
So what do the supermarkets have to offer?
Morrison’s are going down the old loyalty route, offering customers a £20 voucher when they spend over £40 per week for 4 weeks between November and December. Tesco are offering ‘all the trimmings’ (turkey, stuffing, potatoes, sprouts, carrots, gravy, Christmas pudding, custard and mince pies) for £7.93 per head, Netto are going one better at £6.47 per head, and I’m not really sure whats going on over at Asda! So, as always, there are bargains to be had.
As a side note; those of you who suffered a bout of nose turn-uppery when I mentioned Netto: ‘in a blind tasting by 150 people, Which? ranked both Netto's and Aldi's pies ahead of Tesco Finest's pies, Watirose All Butter pies, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference version and Harrods' Luxury pies, all of which are more expensive’. So there!
Go and get your bargains on! (And if anyone is splashing out on one of these – a TEN bird roast – please can I come to dinner?)
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