Let’s hear it for the single shopper

9:46am Friday 11th January 2008

Why do the superstores, which sell mega-family packs and trumpet two-for-one offers, seem so determined to penalise the lone shopper?

WHICH would you rather pay - £4.80 a kg for best mince, or £3.30? £1.32 for 100g of tinned salmon, or 65p? 85p for a pack of Jaffa cakes, or 62p?

If you live on your own, bad luck, you'll probably pay the bigger price every time. And sometimes the difference is considerable. An unofficial tax on singletons, levied by the supermarkets.

Nearly a third of all households in the UK now are made up of just one person.

Most of us will live alone at some period of our lives. And we'll end up paying dearly for it.

Singledom cuts right across the age barrier - young, middle-aged or elderly are all nearly as likely to be living alone.

And the numbers are likely to carry on growing.

But the supermarkets don't seem to have noticed...

Go into any supermarket and you would think the average person lives not only in a family unit, but in a family of 12 or more at the very least. The only sizes available are large or extra large.

Cakes come in packs of six, pies in pairs, pizzas are the size of cartwheels. The shelves are groaning under tins and packets that a generation ago we would have considered catering size.

No wonder we're getting so fat. It is virtually impossible to buy anything in a small size anymore. Remember little pots of jam? Small bars of chocolate?

Half pound packs of sausages? Small pies and puddings or little tins of peas or peaches?

They used to be the mainstay of the corner shops. Now they struggle to survive in the supermarkets. And even if they're there, they're overwhelmed by all the giant sizes.

And you end up paying nearly as much for a small tin as a large one, so it's easy to end up buying the large tin and getting more than you need, or want, or can afford.

Of course, it is easy to understand that larger sizes are going to be proportionately cheaper. The shock is how much better value they are. Or, in other words, what bad value small sizes are - when you can find them.

But the ultimate insult to injury is that virtually all the special offers are on the mega sizes. Buy one, get one free. So the people already buying at lower prices get an extra bonus. Those paying top prices get nothing.

If you live alone you either (a) pay over the odds (b) eat the same thing three meals running or (c) fill the freezer, which means spending more money than you may have or want to.

BAD NEWS FOR SINGLES

■ Very few small sizes

■ Proportionately much more expensive.

Small cans of fruit, fish and vegetables are nearly as expensive as the next size up.

■ Special offers nearly all on big sizes.

Three for two on litres of fruit juice. Buy one, get one free on 1kg bags of apples.

■ Pre packed chops, chicken breasts, fish etc., usually in packs of at least two and often four or more.

■ Very few of the premium ranges in small sizes.

■ Fresh soup smallest size is 500g, most come in 600g, which is a lot.

■ Milk is 42p a pint if you buy just one pint, 35p if you buy a four-pint carton.

When supermarkets were fined for cheating on the price of milk, wouldn't it have been fairer to use the fine to cut prices, especially of single pints?

GOOD NEWS

■ Many supermarkets now have their own deli/butcher/fish counter where you can buy as little as you want, generally a bit cheaper. You'll have to queue a bit more, but you will save money. Probably not as cheap as from an independent butcher, but at least you can buy as little as you want.

■ Most supermarkets now have loose produce where you can buy exactly the amount of fruit and veg you want. But again, their offers are all of the "Buy one, get one free" variety. How many apples can one person eat before they all go to mush at the bottom of the fruit bowl?

WHAT WE FOUND

Just a few small examples...

MARKS & SPENCER

Price of Cumberland pie, for instance, varied from 65p per 100g when you bought a little one, to just 41p per 100g for the family size.

Marks have a good range of microwaveable meals for one. Great, if only for emergencies. The bigger meals are, of course, much better value and they had a special offer on.

Mini quiches were £1.39 but on offer at three for £3. Both sizes of corned beef were on a three for two offer.

Alaskan salmon was £1.39 for 105g tin; £1.89 for 213g tin. But a special offer of two big tins for £2.78 meant that worked out at half the price per kilo of the small tin.

SAINSBURYS

Was where we found the lean mince - £1.20 for a little 250g pack, which works out as £4.80 a kg. The 750g pack is already much better value at £2.99 or £4.27 a kg.

But you can get two of the 750g packs for £5 - which works out at £3.30 a kg.

A pack of Jaffa cakes was 85p. A twin pack was £1.59, giving you a modest saving of 11p. But if you bought two twin packs, for £2.50, the cost went right down to 62p per pack.

ASDA

This is the store that gave us a headache.

Mince was the same price - £2 per kg in both the 250g and 500g packs. Excellent.

But then in the family size 1.2kg packs - where you would expect it to be proportionately cheaper - it suddenly shot up to £2.71 kg. Odd.

BUT there was a special offer - two packs for £6, which brought the price down to... £2 per kg.

A victory for singletons, we think, but horrendously confusing.

MORRISONS

Naughty but nice - twice as nice. Cream cakes pre-packed in pairs. Diet? What diet? A wide range of loose produce, fishmonger, butcher, salad bar, makes this a good place for singles. But it also featured some common pricing policies.

Small tins of Morrisons baked beans are 23p for 220g, and only 31p for 420g. There's a special offer of three for two on the big tins too.

CO-OP

Mini classics ready-meals for one, £1.39 each, on offer at three for £3.50.

Lamb chops were £11.79kg if you bought just two, but £9.74 kg if you bought a pack of nine.

Gold Blend coffee was £1.75 for a 50g jar - or £3.50 for 100g. 200g jars were £4.76, but on offer at two for £6 - making it just £1.50 for 100g.

TESCO

There's value and value...

Value lasagne was £2.64 kg when you bought the 300g size, but just £1.82kg for the 1.5kg size.

This was a store of overwhelmingly large sizes, big packs and special offers.

Bread rolls, for instance, were in packs of six with three packs for £1.

They had some half price offers, including fruit and veg, but most of their special deals were of the special price for two or more big sizes.

CONCLUSION

If you're buying small amounts, you usually get pretty poor value from supermarkets, who seem to be pressurising us to buy more of everything in bigger sizes. For fresh produce and meat, you will be generally better off buying from independent stores or markets.

And supermarkets don't make it easy to compare prices either. Although they might have the price per unit or per kg, the special offers aren't always easy to work out - especially when you're in a hurry and being jostled by other shoppers.

Many of the single shoppers are elderly, living on a pension. Supermarkets make huge profits - Tesco made over £2.5bn last year - and it seems unfair that the very people who can afford to pay the least, end up paying proportionately the most.

Bouquets of th Week

MARGARET Cuthbert rang to tell us about John Ward of Darlington, a real knight of the road. "Last month my 85-year-old mother, Peggy Barker, was on her way to collect two friends to take them to church, when her car broke down.

John Ward was wonderful. He helped mum get her car off the road and rang the RAC. Then not only did he take mum to church, he collected her friends and took them as well.

"He was so kind and we really appreciate the way he made something which could have been quite distressing into an adventure for three elderly ladies."

■ John Ward sounds great and we hope he has a sweet tooth as we're sending him a box of chocs and hope Mrs Barker and her car are safely back on the road.

WHEN she was buying her grandchildren's Christmas presents in Argos, Darlington, Lynne MacDonald didn't realise quite how big and awkward the boxes were going to be. ("Don't start me on packaging," she muttered) but was impressed by the helpfulness of the staff who, "although working non-stop" explained very clearly how she could bring her car round. "However, a very nice gentleman, called Peter Robertson offered to carry my boxes down to the car park for me. He was very kind. Having done our Christmas shopping, I think we felt like veterans of a minor war."

And Sheila Maynard of Darlington rang to say that she had been a victim of the rotten chest infection and bug that are felling people like ninepins.

"Please thank my neighbours Brian and Susan Murphy for their kindness, especially for doing my shopping when I didn't have breath enough to walk to the end of the garden, let alone round town. They were wonderful."

■ If you want to say a public thank you for good service or to a helpful neighbour, kind stranger or efficient business, then just write with all the details to Sharon Griffiths, Bouquet of the Week, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF.

Or e-mail sjgriff111@aol.com.

Each week the person nominated in our main letter gets a real bouquet of flowers or a box of posh chocs.

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