Waitrose, Harborne - Sunday 5th July 2015

Time for another supermarket review. This time, I decided to head to a "posher" supermarket.

Waitrose Harborne is a medium sized supermarket which is based in a very busy High Street. How will it do?

The criteria is as follows.

1. Clean - Yes, clean.
2. Friendly staff -Yes. Checkout staff doing the usual promos such as "Have you got a Waitrose card?" Maybe if it's meant to be a posh supermarket, they should really bag the items for us?
3. Aisle width - Narrower than usual. You can't really fit three trolleys, but two is definitely possible.
4. Everything I was looking for was in stock - Good for a medium sized store. There were quite a few offers that I was impressed. The Bottle Green cordials were on promo, which I was pleased! The variety of fish could be improved - too many fillet cuts and not enough whole fish. The meat section is too small. The fruit and veg section is impressive with many different varieties. Milk was disappointing... Not enough 4 pint bottles available but they are charged at the same prices as Sainsbury's. Prices were probably not as dear as I thought it would be.
5. Extras: pharmacy/opticians/specialist food/petrol station - World foods - one long aisle and a good variety. Obviously not as good as some of the Tesco Extras but a good range available for foods from different nationalities. Other extras include deli, butcher, bakery (where you can order cakes). Oh, and free tea/coffee and newspaper if you have a Waitrose card. No cafe or petrol station or opticians or mobile shop, etc. Good variety of eggs, milk, fruit juices, and cordials!
6. Fresh produce with long sell-by dates - Yes, good long sell-by dates. Reduced items occupy quite a bit and they're not generous in offering discounts - 20% at most.
7. Opening Hours - Requires improvement. 8am to 9pm Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm Saturday, 10am to 4pm Sunday
8. Speed of till-processing - A dozen or so tills. Quick service for a posh supermarket.
9. Self-service tills available -No, they prefer good quality customer service.
10. Parking facilities - Small car park, often congested. Only offering 1 and a half hour parking but it is a medium sized supermaket!
11. Value for money - Surprisingly competitive against the "Big Four" supermarkets on quite a lot of items. However, watch out - some items are over priced such as broccoli, meat or fish.
12. Organic produce - available with an impressive section.
13. Cash machine or cash back - Cash machines available and cash back is available should you need it.
14. Pedestrian access - yes and step free
15. Space ultilisation - For a medium sized supermarket, it's used well.

In my opinion, Waitrose is okay - not great, not bad. I wouldn't go there for a usual shop as quite a few items are overpriced. The quality of stock looks good - which explains why they are more expensive than other supermarkets.



Photo courtesy of the Local Data Company
Rating: 6 out of 10 (-1 for not enough milk in stock, -1 for lack of fish variety, -0.5 for amount of meat in stock, -0.5 for narrower than usual aisles, -0.5 for parking facilities, -0.5 for items being overpriced)