The Best Supermarket to shop at

I love Morrisons but there isn't one near where I live. Maybe I like it because I go there when I'm on holiday, but I always eat more healthy food when I shop there.

That's strange I loathe sainsbury s! Never like their fresh produce we do have 2 morisons tesco and sainsbury near us. Sainsbury is the worst as stuff so short dated. Their largest store is only 12 miles away at Colchester mainly non food! Their bread is all part baked stuff morrisons is baked in store.
Like fish at asda but have to watch some stuff not not good there like clothes browsing at George !

also have coop and Iceland 5 min walk so we have lot choice.

When in Cyprus I use Lidl, they are good value for money, so I can certainly agree on that.

Yes ,my German SiL loves Lidl for their sausages and other German meat.

As I have mentioned before Aldi and Lidl are THE places to shop in Germany according to my German friends. They liken them to our M and S

cheelu You say "I think the worse in terms of freshness has to be Asda". I may need to question that as I find Morrisons to be worse. Sainsbury's are good but by far I find Waitrose to be superior for choice and quality.
Bargain Madness and Home Bargains are definitely cheaper but you do need to watch the sell by dates although in saying that many productswill be consumed long before the expiry date.
I recently bought 400 gram slabs of cadbury's milk chocolate for £1.99 in B&M whereas I normally pay £3.48 for it. OK it had London 2012 packaging but so what, the chocolate tasted the same and only lasts two or three days anyway. So Waitrose it must be but I still keep an eye on branded bargains in other stores. Sadly I have a Morrisons nearest to me but the produce is not up to Waitrose or Sainsbury's standards.

Waitrose, and local Co-op for odd bits.

In the past, I have agreed with the odd comments mentioning snob value around Aldi/Lidl and have viewed them in very much that way. NOT any more! I stayed with friends in Ireland recently and was given superb smoked salmon which was better than the very pricey Scottish "smoked over handpicked individual twigs of the rarest tree at the top of the mountain" salmon, which I buy for Christmas and special occasions. I was stunned to be told it was from Aldi and a fraction of the price, with superb flavour and texture.
So, I am a convert ....and if I could find one near me, I would certainly try shopping there.

When, we have a Home Bargain near us, and find them generally good - especially for branded goods.

I shop much less these days in the local Sainsbury's. It's a small store, in our very small town centre. Over the last few years, Sainsbury's has gradually bought up all the shops and houses around it, and developed plans for a huge superstore, complete with online distribution centre, petrol station, etc. This was completely inappropriate for a residential area like ours, so the locals fought the plans - and won! Our little centre is left like a ghost town, with boarded up shops and demolished houses, etc, but at least we don't have to live with a monstrosity. Waitrose for me!

A couple of new Home Bargains shops have opened in my locality. I went in and found some great bargains - half the price I would pay in supermarkets. Whitworths dates, raisins and other dried fruit ir 79p, instead of about £1.70. I bought some more dates there yesterday and they were horrible - August 2014 use by date, so shoud be fresh, dark and sticky. They were pale and like wood. I phoned the Customer Careline and they knew immediately this batch had been sold to Home Bargains as I started reading the number out. It didn't seem to come as a surprise.

They apologised and will send me some vouchers. I was left wondering whether they offload batches that aren't up to standard to the bargain shops, and that's why they're so cheap. Other stuff I've had has been fine, especially tinned food.

Anyone got any inside information on this sort of thing?

Waitrose, Waitrose, Waitrose with the odd Co-op thrown in for good measure. Waitrose understands the meaning of customer service. I chicken out a fair bit though and go for Ocado for basics.

Braved Sainsbury's on a Sunday (never a good move) because I needed some polenta for a bread recipe. Apparently they aren't stocking it at present - only the ready made stuff. Sadly no good for breadmaking or sprinkling on things.

I love Morrisons and I do the"big" shop there and any other products we need I usually get from Aldi. I have to be really honest and admit to never setting foot in a Waitrose as we do not have one anywhere near us. Listening to everyones comments about Waitrose tho, I think I need to see where the nearest one might be and go on a field trip.

Misplaced apostrophe in that last post should have me permanently exiled to Pedants' Corner. Multi-apologies!

Paradoxically I have become a more careful shopper since Waitrose has been pretty much my corner shop. That's because it has the reputation for being more expensive than its rivals. I look for reduced items, often fish that's near it's sell-by date and which goes straight into the freezer when I get it home. On Saturdays there is usually a selection of half-price bread with which I also stock up my freezer. I try very hard to avoid impulse buying - not always successfully.

Oh, the last message was from Cheelu when I wrote the first para of the above email. Not sure what happened when I pressed 'Post Message' as her message disappeared.

Suddenly realised, message was probably on page 1. Ah well we all have our ditsy moments.

Merlotgran merely repeated Stephen Fry's comment. She did not endorse it or in anyway suggest she supported it. Nobody ignored the remark they just read it at its face value.

For me the best supermarket is the one that is not in an out of town location but in a town centre where you can also get to a range of other shops as well as hairdressers, banks, the library and everything else you want to get to.

Currently that means Co-op and Waitrose. In nearby towns it might be Sainsburys or Sainburys and Waitrose. Tesco doesnt feature because it is consistently in out of town locations and as the nearest Morrisons and Asda are 30 miles away I never visit them.

In the UK it is Waitrose every time. Shopping heaven.
In France Lidl as much as we can because they have the best fruit and veg. We made it out through the snow yesterday, but Lidl was closed because of snow on the roof (there have been problems all over Normandy with collapsing roofs this week). Most super / hypermarkets are poor IMO, especially in winter. Yesterday in Carrefour there was one decent bunch of bananas, but my OH was sent back from the checkout to change them because the cashier couldn't read the bar code. All the rest were grotty so presumably this had already happened several times. Obviously far too much trouble to reprice them. Customer service is truly awful here, especially in the bigger shops.

MrsRobinson When we lived in Lancashire we used to shop at Booths, which was a lovely supermarket. Also, I saw a programme on TV a while ago in which it was said that Booths went out of their way to use local producers. I wish they could be found in southern England.

I think Waitrose and M&S are overpriced and overrated.

A lot of snobbery around Aldi and Lidl although my German friends swear by the shops liking them to M and S in Germany for quality - at certain times of day one can spy our local Middle Classes furtively sneaking around the isles of Aldi and Lidl

Like Morrisons, DH uses Sainsbury because he often gets fuel there. I have boycotted our local Waitrose due to their treatment of a young friend of my DD. She was a very very new mum and absent -mindedly paid for her goods and walked out with a roll of foil balanced on hood of pram. She was stopped at the door, police called and banned from shopping there again. Disgusting.

I like Aldi and Lidl. they have quality unusual goods. I shop at the Co-op in the Outer Hebrides when on our breaks there and at their local shop. I use the next towns butcher (they have just won several awards for their shop and meat)

I usually shop in Sainsburys but thought I'd try the new Aldi which opened today. I did my normal shop, including dog food, plus some extra wine as we will have friends coming for lunch on Sunday. When I got home I went on mysupermarket.com and compared the invoice with exactly the same goods from Sainsbury and Tesco.
The saving?....£29.73

Apart from meat which I buy from our local butcher, guess where I'll be shopping from now on.

With the advent of the likes of Findus. Birds Eye, Tesco, Lidl, Aldi etc., all having traces of horse meat in their products I still stand by my original posts. I think it is now accepted that some companies have shared food companies for their so called 'own brand' items.

I was however quite shocked at the amount of countries that a product passes through from start to finish.

Hasn't Marks and Spencer been quiet.

I moved from Sainsburys to Waitrose about 20 years ago when our local Sainsburys did an extension too far and the time it took me to do my weekly shop increased by over half an hour.

I discovered a small but comprehensive Waitrose in a neighbourhood shopping precinct that also contained a wide range of other shops, banks, hairdressers etc and discovered the joy of the High Street and being able to do all my shopping in a range of outlets offering a variety of goods!!!!!

When we moved to our current home I had a choice of a HUGE Tesco over a mile from the town centre, a Co-op and a Waitrose. Waitrose is smaller, I can get around it and out quickly and it has a free car park and, for me, the best range of goods so I found myself shopping there again. I get 1 1/2 hours of free parking so that when I have done my weeks shopping I can walk 100 yards to the High Street to get my hair done or look at clothes, go to the bank and all the other myriad of tasks you cannot, or may not want to do all with one retailer.

I feel a bit guilty using any of the supermarkets - none of them seem to have a particularly good record in terms of workers' wages, what they pay producers, etc. The trouble is, it's so convenient to go to a supermarket rather than trail round lots of individual shops.

I used to go to Sainsbury's - and do still shop there occasionally - but I find that Asda is much cheaper (though their selection of goods - at least in the smaller stores - is much more limited). The major supermarket - you know who I mean - seems to be taking over the world and I avoid it.

Waitrose refer to it as trading up - you go in for half a pound of Anchor and find yourself picking up the hand made organic jersey butter for five times the price Go with a list like I used to do for my MiL and you don't have to spend too much.