In a perfect world I’d do my supermarket shopping on-line but I don’t and here’s why.
I prefer to shop at Waitrose. Over the years I have noticed two changes. First, I often feel like a shopper in the USSR under Stalin or today in Venezuela. I’m not joking. If I spot my preferred brand of a product I strip the shelf. Next time it won’t be there. It started a few years ago with Schweppes slimmers tonic water. Now almost everything except milk and loo paper is often unavailable. Last weekend there was no Irish soda bread. Often there are no razor blades and when there are it would be quicker to take a bar of gold bullion out of Fort Knox – not the Bank of England, there’s not much there after Gordon Brown’s stewardship. It is something to do with the system they use to re-stock the shelves. In the old days the staff would see that there was a gap and fill it. Now the store re-orders from a central depot based on sales at the till. So if a customer takes a lot of a particular product it takes a while for it to be replenished. I actually expect rationing to be introduced soon. “Sir, you have more than the permitted one bottle of Beefeater in your basket.”
The second change is rather positive. I used to feel a bit guilty buying cut flowers from Kenya, tomatoes from Spain and Italy (never Dutch, they were tasteless) and pak choi from goodness knows where. Now at Waitrose all this stuff is grown in the UK so when we pull up the Brexit drawbridge we won’t starve. Swings and roundabouts.