Britain’s Supermarket Revolution review: “We’re beginning to shop around, shop smaller, shop more smartly”

The days of the Big Shop and the big shop are numbered – and it’s thanks to the web and the Germans

 Happy shoppers … Aldi’s rise is documented in Britain’s Supermarket Revolution. Photograph: Rex/Business Visual

Sam Wollaston

I’ve never liked seeing empty shops, it makes me sad. Empty restaurants, too. But not so much when the empty shop is Tesco, which is closing down some current stores and mothballing new ones before they’ve even opened. The people who worked (or were due to start work) there have my sympathy, of course, but I don’t feel sorry for Tesco itself, especially after hearing about some of its practices in Britain’s Supermarket Revolution (BBC2).

Take “supplier income”, for example, which basically means charging people to stock their goods. That’s what happened to Jonathan, whose plastic squid bath toys used to be stocked by (and sold very well in) Tesco. One day, they told Jonathan that if he wanted that to continue, he would have to forego the £42,000 they owed him. He quite rightly told them to stuff it – and that was the end of the relationship. And the end of Jonathan’s business.

Now it’s not going so well for the big four: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons. But things are especially bad for Tesco. Who’s to blame? We are. The big weekly shop, probably at an out-of-town hypermarket, is approaching its sell-by date. We’re beginning to shop around, shop smaller, shop more smartly. More of us are shopping at Aldi and Lidl, where there’s less choice, but more for our money. And that’s what we want, especially now. More efficiency too. Some of Aldi and Lidl’s time-saving tactics – putting barcodes all over everything to speed up scanning and separating paying from bagging – might seem simple, but we didn’t think of them. We want to shop less in shops and more on the internet.

There’s lots of interesting stuff in Cherry Healey’s little documentary, some of which I knew, some I didn’t. The standout fact for me is that the typical online delivery costs the big four around £15. They’ve got to do it to keep up with Ocado, but that’s an awful lot more than we pay for the service.

Quick, shop online everyone, now, before they catch up. Take ’em down.