Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, has always somewhat intimidated me. With 28 per cent of the grocery market share and more than 4,000 Tesco shops of one kind or another in the country, I’ve never quite felt it needs my custom. My local store is 120,000 sq ft, and as I’m not used to the layout, even though I go in every month or so, a shop there can feel more like an obstacle course than a trip to restock the fridge.
Nevertheless, I’ve been making more frequent visits recently and shopping with an open mind, looking for – and sometimes finding – unexpected products and discounts.
It’s easy to poke fun at Clubcard prices, but far harder to avoid them. Tesco shook up the loyalty card system when it launched two-tier pricing in 2019, offering huge reductions across such a wide range of products that every shopper might, eventually, feel compelled to join in.
I resisted for years but finally caved on a pre-Christmas booze deal. I’m still kind of annoyed about it but it makes no sense to shop in Tesco without a membership. Since then, most supermarkets have gone on to change their schemes and similarly penalise shoppers for refusing to hand over their data. Some loyalty.
Tesco is making a great effort to shift its image. Instead of being known as the largest supermarket with decent discounts, it wants to offer wider benefits. Chief executive Ken Murphy has set his sights on putting sustainability initiatives such as food waste front and centre, though the success has been mixed.
In May, the retailer announced that its efforts to cut food waste in half have been delayed until 2030. The original target of 2025 was missed after an audit of one of its external food waste processors revealed that the company was not directing the waste to animal feed as promised, but using it to generate energy. This meant that Tesco had to revise its figures.
According to the Mail on Sunday’s recent audit of boardroom pay, Tesco is the FTSE 100 company with the largest gap between the pay of a typical worker and the boss. It reported Murphy’s package last year was £10m, 420 times what his average employee takes home. I wonder if he uses a Clubcard.
Here are some of my recent Tesco finds:
Torchon ham
£3.50 for 200g
It’s no surprise that the “weekly shop” has a poor reputation. When most of us buy broadly the same items week in, week out, it can soon spiral into an activity of inescapable drudgery. But when I take the time to explore new shops instead of rushing around those I’m familiar with, I tend to go home more enthusiastic about the meals to come.
Sliced ham is one of those products other members of my family like to find in the fridge without fail and so much of it is alarmingly insipid. In Tesco, I found a whole aisle devoted to charcuterie and picked out the Torchon ham, £3.50 for 200g of thick juicy ham flavoured with its herb rub.
Perfect piled into soft bread or baguette with great butter.
Super size shop
A kilo of peanut butter from £5.50
With a family of three, I rarely need to super size the regular cupboard products that I buy, but I do buy peanut butter by the kilo tub and have five litre refill tubs of laundry and shower products delivered.
At Tesco I noticed great value prices on larger products, such as kilo jars of Nutella for £6.90, huge bottles of Rowse squeezy honey for £3.60 and Meridian peanut butter for £5.50.
Fine cider
From £3.20
Cider has shrugged off its reputation as a festival beverage and entered the more elevated field of fine dining. This sector of cider brands itself as “fine cider” and I’ve loved all those I’ve tried. With a lower ABV than wine, typically 5-8% and resembling a light, fruit-forward fizz or natural wine, fine cider makes a great aperitif and you can drink it through dinner, too.
If you’re looking for a new tipple, Tesco has some great bottles to start you off, from Showerings Triple Vintage cider, £3.75/375ml, from a Somerset family business that supplies Michelin-starred restaurants, to Aspall Premier Cru from the well-known Suffolk producer, £3.20/500ml. If you get the cider bug, try the Fine Cider Company for more variety.
Penguin biscuits
75p per pack
Impossible not to p-p-p-pick up a packet (or four) of Penguin biscuits when Tesco is selling them for only 75p for a pack of seven. This, of course, is one of the store’s fabled Clubcard prices, the source of many a meme as shoppers discuss the impossibility of doing a Tesco shop without a loyalty card.
Tesco Finest Barrel Aged Feta
£4.40/250g (£17.60/kg)
I was really impressed with this feta when I first tried it for a previous taste test. It manages to bring together all the hallmarks of a great feta by being tangy, fruity and creamy.
A tip for finding the better quality feta is to look for those preserved in brine in a plastic tub.
Tesco Finest Chicken Parmigiana pizza
£4.85/450g
I wrote about my pizza snobbiness during a recent taste test of supermarket pizzas, lowering my standards in the line of duty to gamely try the Tesco Finest Chicken Parmigiana pizza. The verdict? I didn’t hate it! In fact, I awarded it the same score, 3/5, as an M&S pizza, though they are very different styles.
“It looks and smells great,” I concluded, “with a lovely fresh-tasting tomato sauce, chewy crust, appetising soft puddles of mozzarella and mascarpone and a tasty garlic and Parmesan crumb.”
School uniform
I try to buy most school uniform on Vinted, a great source of new or barely-worn items. That said, I applaud Tesco for the handy widget installed on its uniform aisle to help parents shopping for a new term.
The smart device in question is a simple cardboard stand, illustrated with height measurements that are matched to Tesco sizing as well as a foot-measuring guide. Finding time to buy every last bit of uniform is one thing, having to return the wrong size is infuriating.
What I left behind…
With its huge budgets and innovation department, Tesco can often jump on a food trend they think their customers will respond to. I’m always interested to see what Britain’s biggest supermarket dreams up and I’m looking forward to trying its new chocolate sourdough crumpets.
An ice cream sandwich will always win me over, and the recipe suggestion of shoving a Tesco Finest Double Cherry & Chocolate ice cream lolly into an almond croissant will take some beating.
Nonetheless, this month’s Japanese Fried Chicken crinkle cut crisps, tequila-pickled onions and frozen Nutella-filled donuts and muffins don’t do it for me.
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