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Supermarkets discussion

GusB

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Scratch bakeries are quite labour intensive and there has been a trend across the industry of more stores moving towards a 'bake off' operation.

'Plant' bakeries such as Allied Bakeries, British Bakeries and Warburtons supply retailers with pre-packed sliced bread and morning goods both branded and retailers own brand.
This is certainly my experience and it's by no means a recent innovation. In all honesty, I had assumed that most supermarkets would have gone down this route; if there are any scratch bakeries still around, I'd be rather surprised (although not disappointed).
 
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dgl

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I believe the regular bread loaves and rolls are still made from scratch in most Morrison's.
 

SteveM70

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Any sort of in-store production is going to be inefficient compared to baking a brought-in frozen product, because (taking the Coop as an example):

1 - a handful of regional bakeries have economies of scale that 2,700 stores don't

2 - maintaining high availability is easier because the stores only have to manage the finished goods (and probably only dealing with one supplier not multiple raw materials suppliers)

3 - from a system point of view its a bit more complicated to manage items that are required, but aren't sold in their own right (how to give the system the visibility of what's in the store, how to know exactly what's been used because it'll vary from bake to bake etc)

4 - easier to manage staffing as in-store baking of frozen bread is relatively unskilled and enough staff can be trained to guarantee someone is always available if stock is required; with scratch baking its more complicated and probably more expensive


The negatives are:

1 - more money tied up in stock

2 - paying a profit margin to the outside baker


For the retailer, it'll depend on the trade off between these things, and more importantly customer perception and sales

I believe the regular bread loaves and rolls are still made from scratch in most Morrison's.

About 65% of the range is scratch baked in stores, so presumably that represents a bigger percentage of sales as it'll surely be the core range of fast selling products
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Talking of bread, the Co-op have a thick white sliced loaf under their own orange coloured wrapper that is the freshest bread that I have tasted in many a long year. It seems a shame to toast it, so I use it on sandwiches with sliced meat.
 

SteveM70

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Talking of bread, the Co-op have a thick white sliced loaf under their own orange coloured wrapper that is the freshest bread that I have tasted in many a long year. It seems a shame to toast it, so I use it on sandwiches with sliced meat.

Made by Jacksons, distributed by Warburtons
 

Baxenden Bank

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"In-store bakery" is in itself a bit vague. When I first started working in a supermarket (Safeway - almost 30 years ago now), we had a proper "scratch" bakery where goods were made from er.. scratch. I know that the bakery manager was a time-served baker, although I'm not sure how many of the other staff were.

I moved to a smaller store and I believe that it was a "bake-off" facility, where part-baked goods were delivered frozen and finished off in the store. This was certainly the case in the last place I worked (Co-op). I think that this is probably the "more efficient way of baking goods in-store" comes from.

The "our bakery" phrase is even more vague; do they mean that the retailer has a central bakery from which products are dispatched, or do they just mean that production is outsourced? In the Co-op I used to have to deal with Warburton's and British Bakeries; the former only supplied goods under the Warburton's name but the latter supplied the own-brand goods, as well as other brands such as Hovis. At Safeway we also had Allied Bakeries as a supplier, again supplying own-brand goods as well as branded products.

I don't honestly mind that much if goods are finished off in-store; you're getting a "fresh" product to an extent and there's also the added benefit of having the smell of freshly baked bread when you walk in.
To me, an in-store bakery would mean 'scratch' baking by a trained baker. Anything else is merely preparation and (as posted after your post) can be done by anyone with basic oven skills (including myself at home). Whether that means dough, cookie mixture or whatever can be delivered ready mixed I will leave to experts.

There is a useful article here on a site 'British Baker' detailing how each of the main supermarket chains does it. The content is copyright protected so I cannot cut and paste.
The article refers to three methods: scratch baking, bake-off and thaw-and-serve. Sainsbury's appears to be the largest user of scratch baking.
 

Bald Rick

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Any sort of in-store production is going to be inefficient compared to baking a brought-in frozen product, because (taking the Coop as an example):

1 - a handful of regional bakeries have economies of scale that 2,700 stores don't

2 - maintaining high availability is easier because the stores only have to manage the finished goods (and probably only dealing with one supplier not multiple raw materials suppliers)

3 - from a system point of view its a bit more complicated to manage items that are required, but aren't sold in their own right (how to give the system the visibility of what's in the store, how to know exactly what's been used because it'll vary from bake to bake etc)

4 - easier to manage staffing as in-store baking of frozen bread is relatively unskilled and enough staff can be trained to guarantee someone is always available if stock is required; with scratch baking its more complicated and probably more expensive


The negatives are:

1 - more money tied up in stock

2 - paying a profit margin to the outside baker


For the retailer, it'll depend on the trade off between these things, and more importantly customer perception and sales



About 65% of the range is scratch baked in stores, so presumably that represents a bigger percentage of sales as it'll surely be the core range of fast selling products

one only has to look at the price of bread in bespoke bakers or on street markets to see how the economies of scale of an industrial size bakery work.

using an example close to me: price of a sour dough loaf baked from frozen on the premises in M&S St Albans is £2.50, similar loaf baked in a local ‘artisan’ bakers being sold on the Market 20 metres outside the M&S front door is £4.
 

Pinza-C55

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I was in my local Tesco last night at 20.45 and they play music in there over the PA. I was startled to hear them playing the 1979 hit "Chuck E's In Love" by Ricky Lee Jones, which those of you old enough to remember will know features the N word in its lyrics. Sure enough the word came out of the speakers. I'm as white as the driven snow but I think they should really have a look at what they play to avoid potential law suits.
 

Jamesrob637

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Have food prices changed much over the past 2 months? Milk prices appear to have stabilised, but not focused much on anything else recently.
 

GatwickDepress

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I was in my local Tesco last night at 20.45 and they play music in there over the PA. I was startled to hear them playing the 1979 hit "Chuck E's In Love" by Ricky Lee Jones, which those of you old enough to remember will know features the N word in its lyrics. Sure enough the word came out of the speakers. I'm as white as the driven snow but I think they should really have a look at what they play to avoid potential law suits.
Most supermarket music is provided by a company called Mood Media who advertise 'lyric checking' as one of their services, so I'm surprised that slipped through the net. Using there's an expurgated version of a track for store use with the offending lyric either removed in favour of the instrumental track or replaced with something less objectionable.
 

jon0844

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Back when supermarkets were open 24 hours, I used to shop at stupid o'clock and they would play music that I assumed was chosen by the night team. It was often much louder than in the day too!

Likewise McDonald's will usually play classical music in the evenings, but sometimes when it gets nearer to closing they pump out the hip hop, presumably to help them clean up and get ready to go home (or maybe re-open at a nightclub!).
 

Ken X

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Have food prices changed much over the past 2 months? Milk prices appear to have stabilised, but not focused much on anything else recently.
Certainly Orange Juice and Squash has had a considerable uplift in price over the last couple of months.
 

Gloster

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Back when supermarkets were open 24 hours, I used to shop at stupid o'clock and they would play music that I assumed was chosen by the night team. It was often much louder than in the day too!

Likewise McDonald's will usually play classical music in the evenings, but sometimes when it gets nearer to closing they pump out the hip hop, presumably to help them clean up and get ready to go home (or maybe re-open at a nightclub!).

Isn’t there a belief that classical music deters hoodies and the like from loitering? It would have the opposite effect with me, unless it was Stockhausen or Steve Reich.
 

Hadders

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Isn’t there a belief that classical music deters hoodies and the like from loitering? It would have the opposite effect with me, unless it was Stockhausen or Steve Reich.
Yes, classical music is well known method of stopping youths loitering.
 

Bald Rick

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Have food prices changed much over the past 2 months? Milk prices appear to have stabilised, but not focused much on anything else recently.

Bread has gone up many other things have gone down, including…

Certainly Orange Juice and Squash has had a considerable uplift in price over the last couple of months.

The orange juice I buy has gone down from £2.10 to £2 last week.
 

jon0844

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Isn’t there a belief that classical music deters hoodies and the like from loitering? It would have the opposite effect with me, unless it was Stockhausen or Steve Reich.

Yes that's why McDonald's does it, along with shopping centres. McDonald's also used to turn off the Wi-Fi but now everyone likely has mobile data, I doubt the latter stops loitering.
 

takno

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Isn’t there a belief that classical music deters hoodies and the like from loitering? It would have the opposite effect with me, unless it was Stockhausen or Steve Reich.
I may have watched too much Morse as a child, but I've always suspected that classical music leads to murder
 

GusB

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I may have watched too much Morse as a child, but I've always suspected that classical music leads to murder
Having heard Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" on various telephone hold queues far too many times, I'd accept classical music as a motive... :D
 

Mojo

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Certainly Orange Juice and Squash has had a considerable uplift in price over the last couple of months.
I scanned a carton of the 1 litre ambient orange juice in Sainsbury’s the other day and was shocked when it came up at £1.50, this was also marked on the shelf edge as Aldi Price Match. When I did go into Aldi their juice was actually £1.59!

What’s strange about that is that the chilled orange juice in Sainsbury’s is only 95p, so I put the ambient juice back and bought that instead.

I know some long life products are often more expensive (eg. UHT milk has always been more than fresh milk) but that was never the case with orange juice. I’m sure it wasn’t that long ago that the cheapest orange juice was 59p or something.

About 18 months ago the major supermarkets also changed their “double strength squash” which was typically £1 for a 1.5 litre bottle to a “x4 strength squash” for £2. Whilst this may not come across as a price increase it works out like one because it’s almost impossible to pour half as much as before!
 

eyebrook1961

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Back when supermarkets were open 24 hours, I used to shop at stupid o'clock and they would play music that I assumed was chosen by the night team. It was often much louder than in the day too!

Likewise McDonald's will usually play classical music in the evenings, but sometimes when it gets nearer to closing they pump out the hip hop, presumably to help them clean up and get ready to go home (or maybe re-open at a nightclub!).
In my town, the local McDonald's would play classical music loudly late in the evening (well, louder than the rest of the day) to try and stop local yoof spending too much time in there at night - it genuinely cut down a lot of the antisocial behaviour in maccies late at night
 

takno

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About 18 months ago the major supermarkets also changed their “double strength squash” which was typically £1 for a 1.5 litre bottle to a “x4 strength squash” for £2. Whilst this may not come across as a price increase it works out like one because it’s almost impossible to pour half as much as before!
I measure it out using the lid or a shot glass. If you make it like it's normal squash it's virtually undrinkable
 

Typhoon

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I have noticed that recently, some Robinson's Apple and Blackcurrant cordial bottles are carrying a note stating "double strength" at the bottom section of the bottle labels recently. I mention this as that is my favourite fruit cordial
I would be interested in what that means. They appear to also produce a 'single strength' version as well. The double strength version has twice the fruit concentrate of the single strength version. Fair enough, but is the single strength version that which they used to sell? My suspicion (aroused by reading a review 'weak as dishwater') is that, in the equivalent of shrinkflation, they have watered down the original slightly, so you need more cordial to make the same strength drink.

sell
 

Fenchurch SP

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Most supermarket music is provided by a company called Mood Media who advertise 'lyric checking' as one of their services, so I'm surprised that slipped through the net. Using there's an expurgated version of a track for store use with the offending lyric either removed in favour of the instrumental track or replaced with something less objectionable.
I've heard the Co-op radio station play the explicit version of Don't Marry Me by The Beautiful South.
 

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