With food prices continuing to rise amid the soaring cost of living crisis, many shoppers have been switching up where they go for their weekly shop to keep prices down. And while the likes of Aldi and Lidl have gained popularity this year, there is one place that is often overlooked - Marks and Spencer.
Long regarded as one of the more expensive supermarkets, M&S has been branching out and expanding their range of value-branded products leaving one shopper "impressed" with the amount he could purchase on a budget.
The supermarket's "Remarksable Value" range has been on the receiving end of some glowing praise from shoppers. The range offers a whole plethora of essentials that has customers ditching the likes of Sainsbury's for their weekly shopping trip.
To see if the upmarket supermarket's value-branded range had really stepped up its game, Dan Wiggins from MyLondon recently ditched his usual visit to Tesco for a trip to M&S to see if he really could purchase his essentials while sticking to a budget.
With a total that came to just over £16 the reporter was left so impressed by the shop that he "won't be going back to Tesco for a while."
Here is how Dan got on as originally reported by MyLondon:
"Having caught wind of this I felt I had to go and check the range out for myself so I headed down to my local food hall in Finsbury Park to see what all the fuss was about.
"I decided I'd get the items I needed for a pair of simple recipes, incorporating as many of the value ingredients as I could to make the most of the range. The recipes were a beef and bean chilli with jacket potatoes and a simple slaw, and sausage and broccoli spaghetti.
"Upon walking into the shop I headed for the bread section where I picked up some large white rolls for 95p, I've seen the exact same ones in Tesco before for the exact same price so this was a promising start.
"Soon the bargains started appearing left, right, and centre, with spaghetti for under a pound, eggs for £1 exactly, and eight pork sausages for just £1.50! Beef mince for £1.80 was another steal and as I secured all my veg for the week for just over £6 I started to wonder whether I'd walked into Aldi or Lidl by mistake.
"Gradually though, I became very aware of my surroundings as some more expensive outliers began entering my basket, red kidney beans for 75p felt particularly egregious and £2.75 for 350g of cheddar is pretty hard to take, the 'value' option in the cheese range a £4 block of 550g.
"The total shop ended up coming to £16.19 overall and should sort my lunches and dinners until at least the end of the weekend. Whilst there were a few regrettably expensive items, I do feel like the value was approaching what you get at an Aldi or Lidl, and certainly better than your local Tesco.
"What I would warn though is that despite the genuinely great value on the items in the 'Remarksable Value' range, there just wasn't enough variety in that range to make doing an entire shop at M&S a viably cheap option unless you're sticking closely to the basics.
"That said, I was impressed, and it left me certain of one thing - I wouldn't be returning to Tesco for a while.
A Tesco spokesperson told Manchester Evening News its current prices for the items featured are as follows:
- Large white rolls - 80p
- Spaghetti - 23p
- Eggs - £1.15
- 8 pork sausages - £1.20
- Beef mince - £1.79
- Kidney beans - 33p
- Cheddar- £2.65
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