Unnecessary price rises coming from suppliers?
Updated: Apr 3
The chairman of Tesco caused a bit of a stir the other day saying that food firms are raising prices unnecessarily and taking advantage of the cost of living crisis. In their coverage, the BBC showed a picture of fresh fruit and veg, which we were pretty irritated by - pretty sure supermarkets sell a lot more than fresh produce, and the comments he made seemed to be actually more about tinned and other non-fresh food.
Anyway, it got Chris wondering about a few things. So, (Little Valley) beer in hand, he did some research....
Firstly, we thought it would be worth comparing this week's boxes and our produce against the equivalent fromTesco's. Although we know customers don't buy from us purely on price, it's still a useful sense-check (we've done this a few times in the past). As has been the case before, a direct comparison is impossible as a lot of the products in our boxes aren't available as organic, and some are not available at all.
So if we just look at the organic produce that is avaialable this week at Tesco:
Our verdict: Although we're marginally more expensive on the first few items, there's a big difference in price in the bottom 4. We struggle to believe that Tesco is paying more than we do for these items so who is making the profit there?
Secondly, let's look at how the non-organic versions compare to ours:
Our verdict: A kg of red cabbage for 60p?? Wow. Unsurprisingly, Tesco non-organic produce is cheaper than our organic veg, but then you get into the things beyond initial price (like how long it keeps, taste, nutrients/health, etc). Thirdly, let's look at some of the other items we sell:
Our verdict: So chopped tomatoes we're more expensive, but the other items are more espensive. Not sure this backs up the claims of Mr Tesco.
Our aim/mission whatever you want to call it is for the people of the Vale of Clwyd to have access to the highest quality food, grown with out pesticides and herbicides. This week we have decided to buy in more pantry items for our shop for next week. Spread the word.. Support your local grocers - if there is something we don't stock then tell us and we'll see what we can do, we can compete with the supermarkets on price.