Sunday, 12 July 2015

Tesco, Edgbaston - Saturday 11th July 2015

Following news that Tesco in Edgbaston (Five Ways) is closing, I want to do a re-review to see how Tesco Edgbaston will fare now.

Tesco Edgbaston is based in Five Ways and has opened since the 1970s. Its rival is Morrisons Edgbaston which is pretty much opposite to it. It is due to close in mid-August due to now renewing its lease. So, how will it do now that the store is closing soon? And what will its rating be?

The criteria is as follows.

  1. Clean - Yes, clean in general.
  2. Friendly staff - Quite friendly.The checkout lady offered to pack up and gave a good greeting.
  3. Aisle width - Most aisles wide enough for three trolleys. However, some aisles are slightly narrower (notably non-foods and the small clothing section) where two trolleys can be passed through.
  4. Everything I was looking for was in stock - Better than before, now to a good. The essentials such as fruit, veg, meat, milk, eggs were stocked well. World foods offered a good variety of Chinese goods and other international goods. Very impressed that it offered brunches of spinach, ung choi, choi sum and pak choi with it being reasonably priced. Fish could be better - not enough variety compared to the Morrisons opposite.
  5. Extras: pharmacy/opticians/specialist food/petrol station - Pharmacy, small clothing section (I do mean small), specialist world foods (good with three aisles) and good section on organic and quorn goods available. Halal butcher, deli, bakery, fishmonger also available. Finally, there's a Costa cafe and a small narrow petrol station. Petrol is priced very reasonably - unleaded petrol is 114.9p per litre, just 0.2p behind the cheapest one I've seen which is 114.7p at Asda, Barnes Hill.
  6. Fresh produce with long sell-by dates - Yes! All the goods I bought have long sell-by dates for the week. There is also a reduced foods section with not too many goods which shows that stock control is reasonable. Reduced goods offered at around a 25% discount during late morning.
  7. Opening Hours - Requires improvement. 6am to Midnight Monday to Saturday. 10am to 4pm Sundays. Bordering on inadequate from next Monday - opening hours changed to 6am to 10pm Monday to Saturday. But then it is closing.
  8. Speed of till-processing - Self-service tills available on one side of Tesco (weird layout), and non self-service tills (around 14 in total) on the car parking side. It is quite quick and good service.
  9. Self-service tills available - Yes, though I didn't use this facility.
  10. Parking facilities - 3 hour parking limit at a multi-storey car park. Good amount of parking time available. What is disappointing is the narrow parking spaces, but it was easy to find one as lots probably defected to Morrisons or the Tesco in Spring Hill.
  11. Value for money - Generally competitive with it being part of the "Big Four" supermarkets. Their loyalty card offers the Fuel Save option and it has a petrol station (albeit being narrow). It also has somes goods cheaper than the Chinese supermarket, such as the Vitasoy.
  12. Organic produce - available if you want them.
  13. Cash machine or cash back - Cash machines available inside the superstore and cash back is available should you need it.
  14. Pedestrian access - yes and step free.
  15. Space ultilisation - Weird layout of two old office blocks stuck together. Still not a fan of groceries being in the middle of the supermarket. However, they have done the best they can out of this. The concerning bit though was that in the non-foods section, it was boiling hot. It was air conditioned where the foods are. Though I am concerned that with the reduced foods section, it does stink.
In my opinion, Tesco Edgbaston has improved slightly but it can never really match Spring Hill. Which is probably why they decided to have one in Spring Hill. Tesco Edgbaston is a very quiet superstore and it's a shame (even though I'm not a fan of it) that it's closing down. UoB students will miss out from this.

 

Photo courtesy of the Local Data Company

Rating: 5.5 out of 10 (-0.5 for small clothing section, -0.5 for narrow petrol station, -0.5 for narrow parking spaces, -0.5 for lack of variety of fish, -1 for reduced foods aisle that stink, -0.5 for temperatures not being even enough, -1 for opening hours)

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