Day In Supermarket - Wrottesley Street - 22 March 2014

I've been asked by a few of you to write a review on a Chinese supermarket in Birmingham. Well, today, I went to Day In Supermarket. There's two branches and I decided to head to the original base at Wrottseley  Street opposite Big Wok buffet restaurant.

So, what is it like? The criteria is as follows.

1. Clean - yes, in general.
2. Friendly staff - they are generally friendly. They are trilingual and whenever you want to look for something, you can ask them and they are really efficient.
3. Aisle width -unfortunately due to size, it's narrow and it meant that two small trolleys was a struggle.
4. Everything I was looking for was in stock - Mostly - if you're looking for specific Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese and stuff from the Far East, they are available. However, you won't be able to find items such as cheese, milk, carrots, tomatoes as it is a specialist Oriental supermarket. No clotted cream either - so don't head there if you are buying cream teas for Churchcentral Forward.
5. Extras: pharmacy/opticians/specialist food/petrol station - Nothing extra - just specialist food available.
6. Fresh produce with long sell-by dates - yes in general. You can buy expired goods which are normally reduced at half price.
7. Opening Hours - 9am to 6pm Mondays to Saturdays. 10am to 6pm Sunday. Long opening hours on a Sunday as it's not a big supermarket, more of the size of a convenience store. Quite restrictive opening hours in my opinion.
8. Speed of till-processing - two manned tills available. Quite fast, efficient and friendly. They also pack your items.
9. Self-service tills available - no.
10. Parking facilities - unfortunately due to the location, based right at the city centre, there's no free parking. The nearest is the Chinatown car park opposite.
11. Value for money - As it's based at the city centre, prices are more expensive than say Wing Yip, which is based at the outskirts of Birmingham. However, there are promotional items and some items are cheaper than the big four supermarkets, especially on specialist food, such as pak choi or tofu.
12. Organic produce - not as far as I am aware of.
13. Cash machine or cash back - No, and they don't offer cashback. Though I normally use cash to buy items there.
14. Pedestrian access - Good - one side with steps and one side with a ramp, allowing disabled access. The only let down at the end of the ramp - there is a step, so that could be improved.

Overall, the Day In Supermarket is good for its size. If you are looking for specialist Oriental goods, you are likely to be happy there. The only letdown is that it could be bigger, but then it would need to acquire other sites. It's not as busy as the one in the Arcadian and it does have quite a chilled out atmosphere. Oh, and at the end of the year, they hand out free calendars - saves you buying one and the pictures are generally really nice - something associated with Chinese culture.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.