If you’ve read any of my Thrifty Mrs C posts you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of a bargain, especially if it involves saving money on the weekly supermarket shop. In my quest to save money I’ve become a bit of what bargain hunters refer to as a “supermarket flirt”, moving around to where the special offers and best prices are. It was therefore perfect timing to be asked by Morrisons to become a #MorrisonsMum in the week that they announced that the prices had been cut on over a thousand items in a permanent move to bring about a new cheaper Morrisons. So, off the family headed to the St Albans branch with a handful of gift vouchers and a shopping list to put them to the test.
Now, I should declare that I do rather like Morrisons. They’re a northern brand that I’ve always associated with honesty and being straight-forward. As soon as we drove into their car park we were pleased to find plenty of Parent and Child parking spaces available and also noticed a guy checking the cars parking in the slots to ensure that they weren’t being abused. A good start.
As with most supermarkets you start off in the fruit and veg section and this is where our local branch of Morrisons really does impress. Check this out.
A water mister over some of the veg and all the herbs. In terms of first impression as you walk into the store it certainly looks good and adds a bit of wow factor. The range in the department was also far better than anything I’ve seen in any of the other local supermarkets. Not only was there white asparagus alongside the usual green, but samphire too.
Moving on from fruit and veg we next came to the rest of their Market Street and first up was the deli counter and fridge units stocking the deli products. All very nicely done, fairly priced and with an impressive range. It was frustrating that these deli items just said on them “may contain allergens” meaning that we needed to ask questions to find out if they were safe for Mr C to eat with his peanut allergy or not.
Another thing that Morrisons really pride themselves on is having real butchers right there in store and this was definitely the case in St Albans.
The same was the case with the fishmonger and it certainly gave me a good feeling about what I was buying rather than it all just being a bit face-less as you get in other supermarkets.
As we continued round I was rather impressed with some of their price reductions. 45p for a can of soup is a great price and I’m looking forward to that for tomorrow’s lunch.
I also picked up an eight pack of coke which now only costs £2.64 after Morrisons’ price cuts – a huge saving compared to the £4.39 that Ocado are currently charging for the same!
All the way round the supermarket I was keeping a very close eye on the price tags and there were a few times when you had to realise that actually the branded products were cheaper than the Morrisons’ own brand products. Their Eskimo chocolate biscuits are a good example. A packet of 8 costs £1, yet a packet of 9 Penguin biscuits is just 74p – and that’s without any special offers that I could see. I’d initially reached for the Morrisons own brand ones just assuming they’d be cheaper, but in the end we went for the branded ones and saved money.
Before heading out to Morrisons I went online to their website and chose a few of their recipes to include in this weekend’s meal plan and added the ingredients to my shopping list. I plan to blog about the recipes themselves separately, but I did find it a bit tricky to find a few of the ingredients they called for in the quantities required. Firstly tinned cherry tomatoes were something I’d not even heard of before, and they took a bit of finding, even with the help of a member of staff. The same recipe also called for two 400g tins of butter beans, yet Morrisons own brand butter beans were only in 300g can sizes. They did have another brand in the 400g size which was actually cheaper than buying the Morrisons own brand ones, but I was surprised that they didn’t stock the usual can size. It’s not as if the St Albans branch is particularly small.
One other thing I quite like about Morrisons is that although they don’t have loads of non-food lines in store the ones that they do have in my local branch are pretty good. The Nutmeg children’s clothes ranges are really nice and I’ve bought clothes before for both kids from there and found them to be really good quality. I was also rather taken by this shelf full of cute gnomes in the garden section, rather close to a good basic selection of camping gear.
So overall I was rather impressed with using Morrisons for my weekly shop. There were some really good bargains to be had, and I thought the fruit and veg was particularly good. I was surprised that some of their own brand products ended up more expensive than the brands that they stock, but maybe I just need to get over the idea of own brands always being cheaper. I’d definitely look to go back for some of my regular items that are now significantly cheaper than in other supermarkets. The only problem I had with the shop was that they don’t stock the family’s favourite breakfast cereal (Kellogg’s Start in case you’re wondering) which was a shame as I will now have to go elsewhere to pick that up.
My final bill came in lower than I expected, especially since we’d picked up quite a few non-food items like loo rolls, nappies and new toothbrushes for the kids too.
In case you’re interested in the detail my total bill came to £86. 21 and here’s what I bought (in the order on my receipt):
- 4 pack of apple juice
- 2 bottle of Ribena
- 2 bottles Schloer
- 2 bottle milk
- 8 pack of Coca-Cola
- 2 x tinned cherry tomatoes
- 2 x tins butter beans
- 2 x Andrex 9 pack
- 4 pack baked beans
- 4 pack chopped tomatoes
- 3 x Radox shower gel
- 2 x cans soup
- Pull up nappies
- Malted milk biscuits
- Penguin biscuits
- 4 x custard pots
- 2 x kids toothbrushes
- 2 x Sure deodorant
- Hovis bread
- Pizza
- Cartons apple juice
- Croissants
- Creeme Fraiche
- 2 x packs of sausages
- Spaghetti
- Tortillas
- Pitta bread
- Fromage Frais
- Cooked chicken fillets
- Minced lamb
- Cheddar
- Onions
- Scotch eggs
- Pork pies
- Sausage rolls
- Olive spread
- Bacon
- Spanish cured meats
- Humous
- Tzatziki
- Tomatoes
- Courgettes
- Salad
- Pom Bear crisps
- Bread rolls
Disclaimer: We were sent £80 of Morrisons gift vouchers to spend in store as part of my role as a #MorrisonsMum. All opinions and experiences are entirely my own.
We have just done our shop and I was really impressed with ‘Market Street’. Veg section was amazing.
Yes – veg was definitely very impressive!
I’ve been really impressed with all their fresh produce, perfect for this time of year.
We went shopping there over the weekend too, and those misters are very cool. I’ve not seen them anywhere else in the UK. I also had an in-depth convo with the woman on the deli counter – she was very helpful. Overall I was impressed. I would shop there if they were closer!