please empty your brain below

I am fortunate to have when in UK a large Tesco and Asda within 6 to 7 minutes walk from home. Both open 24 hours. Sainsburys a short bus ride away, buses every 8 minutes.
Over here in Spain I have a DialPrix supermarket 4 minutes walk away and a large Carrefour superstore 10 minutes cycle ride.
I wonder what the self service tills will do when plastic bag charging commences.
By the way the large supermarkets here in Torrevieja have self service aisle and you can select Spanish or English language.
Glad your everyday shopping is now easier for you dg.
I thought the one that was meant to open years ago had opened while I was still living in Bow, bit down the Lidl end. Ha!

On a slight tangent, I noticed the Sainsbury's haertland radiating west from Holborn Circus is getting yet another Sainsbury's local in the old Curry's store opposite its High Holborn HQ. You can barely move for Sainsbury's in the Holborn / Chancery Lane / Farringdon triangle!
Eskimo Pie - Sainsbury's also opened a branch in the Brunswick centre too, within sight of Waitrose and round the corner from Tesco.

Anybody know where the two closed branches of the same supermarket are? I reckon the Sainsbury's at the top of Tottenham Court Road and the one at the southern end of Hampstead Road are setting the bar pretty high.
Don't get too used to that multitude of options. After a few months they'll evaluate what's selling and what's not and you might find that proper bakery bread gone and replaced by Everyday Value Sliced White.
I never liked Tesco's own bread or their own brand Bourbon - otherwise I don't have a strong aversion to Tesco, the nearest supermarket to me is Sainsburys - a near 10 minute walk away, but the bread and Bourbon are to my liking.
John: plastic bags are already chargeable in Scotland, Wales and NI. I think the self-service tills just use the honesty system, like M&S do, and ask you how many you've used.
I live near the Morrisons in Stratford so do a lot of shopping there. But I am pleased that choice is opening up, in that the vacant site of the much lamented WH Smith in the Stratford shopping centre is becoming a Lidl in November. Was surprised that the always packed Sainsbury's next door didn't take over the space but perhaps its just not in their plans - or they were outbid by Lidl.
Thanks for the bag answer martin, I always take my own bag(s) and am asked at self service till how many I used in order to claim Tesco card points for being "green" so honesty is needed there too.
Maybe there will be some sort of sensor on the bag issuing arm to detect people who are understating the number of bags taken by a large amount.
I am often amazed by people who seem to need a bag for each item and then double up bags for extra carrying strength.
In Spain the large stores charge for bags and will ask if you need any at the check out bag= "bolsa", but small shops and market stalls just give them away.
If I get homesick there is an Iceland supermarket in town with all English staff serving in the store and the same products on sale as in their UK stores. I seldom go there as they charge more than Spanish shops, as goods are imported from UK.

Lorenzo- I think there are two Tesco shops not far apart along Holland Park Avenue
Where I am in NW London there is the staggering choice of a small, and a medium sized Sainsburys, (and a pathetic Sainsburys Local that is a complete waste of space), along with 2 Icelands within a 2 mile radius. There was talk of a Lidl a couple of years ago, but nothing since.
@Scott is probably right. We had a shiny new Co-op open here some years back, with a wide choice of all sorts, including a bakery, deli counter, fish counter, cheese counter and quite a lot of 'green' alternatives for washing things.

This soon slimmed down, specially the 'green' section, to what was popular with the locals.

It's now an Asda store and almost everything comes pre-packaged on shelves/in chiller cabinets. Mind you, sometimes they do some nice stuff too!
@EskimoPie

"You can barely move for Sainsbury's in the Holborn / Chancery Lane / Farringdon triangle!"

Surely you mean Midtown!
Bethnal Green road has two tescos, one metro, one express almost within sight of each other. The bigger metro is open 24 hours so I don't see the point in the smaller one except maybe on Sundays
a "blus" in your text DG - is this a new word cf Dangleway?

dg writes: Fixed, thanks.
You Brits and your obsession with shopping!

It's something we Germans don't really care a fig for.. Example: do you also get excited when a new gas/petrol/tank station opens up? Because there's not really a difference apart from the fact that you socially measure yourselves on which name on the carrier bags you use has. Nevertheless, you continue to fall for the publicity of these 'outlets' and that's the reason the national per head level of debt is much higher than in Germany.

Come on, get a life.
Strangely, I am happy when a new shop opens that saves me a 20 minute walk somewhere and back to buy decent fresh bread, a cauliflower and smoked salmon. I know I’ll be going to hell for this consumeristic obsession - and diamond geezer with me. But at least our identity is not wrapped up in an ill-founded moral sense of superiority to whole countries.
Am I the only one mildly surprised by DG's preference for a real assistant over self service?

I live quite near the new Charlton Sainburys that replaced the Greenwich peninsula one. It's absolutely colossal, but seems to just carry more of what it used to have (including what appears to be a whole aisle of frozen chips). It seems almost designed to steer you to online shopping as merely walking from one end to the other and back will take 20 minutes.
Being car-free, disabled and a bit fussy, I shop from Sainsbury's online. It's not quite perfect but provides nice stuff at fair prices.
@anon Your nastiness proves I was quite near the mark I think..
The best grocery store in the area is Simply Fresh, a small, quality independent on the Bethnal Green side of Roman Road.
Not sure how "toddling distance" is defined but I only have a Tesco local within 10 mins walk and it's dreadful so I rarely use it. The weekly shop involves a walk, waiting on a street corner for a Hail and Ride bus and a 12-15 minute bus ride to Sainsburys. Any other supermarket option involves 1 or 2 buses or a minimum 20 minute walk. Sainsburys have recently irritated me by withdrawing a number of products I used to buy but there is no other reasonable supermarket that is affordable and offers a reasonable choice and is not redolent of "hell" when shopping there. Sounds like Bow was worse off then E17 is but we're not exactly overflowing with choice despite council efforts to allow a Tesco to open every 300 metres [1] along main roads.

[1] I exaggerate slightly.

@ Isar Steve - would I be correct in thinking that Berlin (and Germany) has retained a better mix of smaller shops (bakers, butchers, grocers) alongside smaller scale supermarkets? It's felt like that when I've visited in the past but visiting is not the same as being resident somewhere and having to cope with the retail facilities that exist. I think we go on about shops in the UK because we can't make our minds up about what sort of High Sts we want. Typically we want all possible choice all the time but with none of the downsides.
Hmmm... I think I'd be right in saying that all the areas you've lived in since leaving university could now be said to be "T£$co Towns."

Rather too coincidental? ;)
meanwhile on today's city pages; Morrison's are to close all their smaller shops, and Lidl plan to expand into upmarket areas where they're not currently located.
personally I have no experience of shopping at either of these, locally I have Sainsbury's and Waitrose and get to a Tesco occasionally. But it will be interesting to see what happens.
Amber: Morrison's are to close all their smaller shops

In fact they have sold them all for a fairly nominal sum. How many will survive is a good question.
My experience of German and indeed many other continental supermarkets is they are designed for function over aesthetics than ours have been. Over the last ten to 15 years ours supermarkets have become destinations with focus on the right type of lighting, displays etc. Contrast this with the pile them high principle of many continental supermarkets with their huge boxes of washing powder etc. The downturn-busting success of Aldi and Lidl in Britain has proved that even the middle classes are prepared to swap niceties for affordability. Other things to mention are European town and city centres have traditional had far more apartment blocks than our high streets (surrounded by suburban sprawl) so it's normal to see smaller supermarkets on the ground floor of residential buildings. (Likewise petrol stations, something which was once more common in Britain but now almost an oddity.) Add to this, I think in France, at least the butcher, baker etc in village centres are protected (perhaps subsidised) which explains their continued survival despite the France's love of hypermarkets.
Lorenzo - I think I can just about match Tottenham Court Road for proximity of Sainsbury's branches - either side of Clapham North station there are two branches of Sainsbury's within about 120 metres of each other! I think the aim was to catch the people turning right on exiting the station as well as those turning left. Seems to work, as both are busy. That's in addition to a big branch another 350 metres further down the same road, and a fourth mini one round the corner for good measure.
Same in Brixton (Google gives it as 0.1 mile), though in Brixton's case they're both a right turn as you exit the tube.

That explains it... last month we moored our narrowboat next to Victoria Park (she normally lives on the Slough Arm) and my quest was to shop for bread, eggs etc. and more importantly The Times for my mother using a Times voucher. Google Maps told me there was a Morrisons and I went looking...now I know. Percy Ingle supplied the bread (not too bad) but none of the 6 local shops knew nothing about Times vouchers, including the one with the large Times sponsored canopy - I guess why would they. Ended up using the Tescos Local by Tottenham lock if anyone is interested. On balance a largish Tescos isn't the best option for a area but if the existing shops are not meeting the need well who can blame them.
Why are people so disappointed that its a Tesco? I read that no other supermarket was interested on the site. Morrisons closed it down.

I went to the Tesco last week and found it pleasant to shop in. It was a lovely new store and I can see it bringing crowds of people to Roman Road.

It's interesting why they dropped the 'Metro' on its signage.










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