The CO - OP and their prices.
 

It amazes me how they manage to survive with their sky high prices and constant increases in an era of Aldi and Lidl.I've noticed both Aldi and Lidl are now building stores in the suburbs where the CO - OP have had the manopoly for so long.Good,about time they were brought into line!

I think with co op or the one where I used to live and the two closest to me, the convenience and opening times make them worth a tad more.

macafee2

Supply and demand. I live in a village 9 miles from the nearest supermarket and the Coop is a necessity for the elderly people in the village. Aldi and Lidl will never build a convenience store in the village.

There are plenty of CO-OP''s in suburbia overcharging.Don't bank on it that Aldi or Lidl don't arrive to provide a little competition.On the outskirts of Derby in a suburb near me there are two CO - OP's and Aldi have a new store under construction placed right in the middle of them.Perfect.

I thought it was just our local Coop that was silly expensive, obviously not.



We have several competing shops in the Main St, but it doesn't seem to bother them. They have a special offer which really winds me up - If you buy 2x 2L of milk, you can buy them for just a little more than the other shops charge for their milk, buy 1x 2L and you pay well over the cost. Only the big families will need to buy 2x 2L at the same time.



Sometimes there is no choice, as in the other shops don't have any 2L blues, or what they have is short dated.


We do have a local Lidl and they are the favoured source for many things, just a walk away, but the Main St is a little handier.

These days, especially with the advent of mini markets, the ‘local’ competition is keener than ever it was. Even the bigger names have moved into the mini-market sector and their prices reflect local conditions.

There was a time, and I don’t know if it still applies, the Coop offered the ‘divi’ – dividend stamps on your card, read loyalty bonus. Used to be called ‘Cooperative and Wicks Society’ and was on nearly every corner. What a superb Socialist enigma. The days of those tram lines in the air, whizzing across the shop on wires on the way to the cashier sitting somewhere safe with the money.

At 14/15 years I had a pocket money job pushing a bike, loaded panniers of groceries front and back, all the way up Halton Hill in Runcorn. Boy, was that a hill. Its funny how there were usually two or three bags of Cadbury’s half covered biscuits in each pannier, each light by about two biscuits by the time I got to the first drop. What a rosy glow nostalgia brings.

All local convenience stores tend to be a little more expensive. We use our local co-op for the small shop for items such as milk in between the major shopping trips to the supermarket. It saves around £3-£4 in fuel, which is probably more like £6-£8 in the total cost of driving the shopping trip mielage. The circa £10 of co-op purchases may be say 10% more expensive but it's still a lot less than driving to the supermarket.

If your local co-op closes down because Aldi have taken their customers, guess what Aldi will do to their prices at the local stores.

There is room for both Maninder if the CO-OP temper their greed.

We have a CoOp in the centre of Witney, it always has a steady flow of customers. I would never go in there for a weekly shop but for a loaf of bread or something for dinner its fine.


Our local Aldi is out of town so unless you are doing a bigger shop spending the money on the fuel to save a few pence let alone the time is just not worth it.


We also have a small Spar shop less than a 3 min walk from my house, most stuff in there is expensive but they also have a constant stream of customers from the time they open at 7am until they close at 8pm and I have seen people in there with what looks like a weekly shop. Personally I use it for milk and bread if we get low.

No chance of Aldi or Lidl. This is a small village, not suburbia, and the Coop employs 2 or 3 people. It would take them many years just to recover the cost of building a store.