Waitrose

Popped into Waitrose to stock up yesterday morning while bread batch No.678 was on its second rise, which, for a change, was happening in the middle of the day rather than late afternoon. The result of getting up unusually early. Like the bakers of old.

First item was a packet of Carr's table water biscuits, presently preferred to Jacob's, missing from the shelves of Sainsbury's large store in Kiln Lane, but present in the much smaller Waitrose in town centre. Amongst various other products from Carr's of which I had no prior knowledge. More generally, the impression that BH is getting from her weekly visits to Kiln Lane is that Sainsbury's is cutting back the number of lines that it carries quite sharply. Which coupled with their penchant for moving stuff about the store, means that the weekly shop is taking rather longer than of old. We assume that moving stuff around is a device to get you to walk more of the store, making impulse purchases more likely.

While Waitrose, on its butchery counter, was featuring a line called 'ancient cuts of meat', or something of that sort. With the example on offer being a large chunk of good looking brisket, on the bone. And looking surprisingly good for something in a plastic shrink wrap.

Second item was topping up on Canadian wholemeal bread flour, a product with much more pleasing appearance than the Waitrose essential strong brown I sometimes have to resort to. A coarse brown flour rather than an off-white flour with brown sprinkles. That said, I doubt whether I could tell the difference in the resultant bread, even if I had both sorts side by side.

Third item was from Bastides. One their hard-to-peel saucisson secs. Expensive too.

Moved to the zone with the self-service tills, to find that the tills that were there when I last visited, and which I think had been there for some years, had all been changed for newer models. They were more spaced out, so I guess one or more of the attended tills had been taken out. The new tills were all very glossy, a bit easier to use than the old ones, and the young man who was in attendance explained that, inter alia, the new tills made shop lifting harder. Even in Waitrose! I wondered about the expense, guessing that the new tills cost a small number of thousands each, all to be recovered from their loyal shoppers.

But not so easy to use that one middle aged male shopper did not get rather stroppy and aggressive about his failure to present his card properly. The older lady attendant refused to help he was so stroppy and it took the young man to deal with him. I found the very short fuse of this quite big man rather alarming. How many more of them are there about?

[Shoppers at Piggly Wiggly, the first self-service supermarket, in 1918. Library of Congress/Corbis Historical/Getty Images]

PS 1: a quick canter through Bing failed to turn up prices of these tills. A busy market place with plenty of people selling them, but I guess you have to be serious before they will give you a price, although I now suspect that a few thousands is overdoing it. Maybe if you include ripping out the old ones and installation. But I did turn up some interesting material, including the snap above and the references below. And the bottom line seems to be that while customers might have mixed feelings about these self service tills, they are here to stay. 

PS 2: BH points out that the snap above is clearly posed. People are too well dressed and there are too many men.

References

Reference 1: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/09/business/self-checkout-retail/index.html.

Reference 2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61501128.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout.

Reference 4: https://www.pigglywiggly.com/. Only in America!