How super is your local supermarket? How much time do you spend there? Daily? Weekly? Even monthly, you're probably popping in for at least 20 minutes at a time, but is it somewhere you want to spend more time? Like, say, a lunch or early dinner with friends? Not grabbing you by the sweet 'n' sour pork balls yet? Bear with, as they say.
Osterley (Lucky, lucky Osterley) in West London is apparently one of the 10 most affluent areas with a Tesco Extra store in the UK. This is an IMPORTANT FACT. On this basis, Tesco (who have just announced a 6% drop in profits and a continuing decline in market share) have decided that Tesco Extra Osterley shall be henceforth blessed with its own inaugural in-house deli-diner, Fred's Food Construction. This has been conjured into being by consultants such as Paul Goodale, ex-Harrod's restaurant director and Daniel Gestner, an investor in Yoomoo (Yoo-who? *snicker*) who were brought in to make Tesco Extra stores - and we quote - "warmer and less clinical". Notwithstanding the fact we would probably prefer our supermarkets clinical, if only being easier to keep clean and we don't have time to be lounging on chaise longues when we need our Cheestrings and bottle of Tizer, we are now being invited to dine in our local supermarket.
So let's pretend we are indeed struggling to find somewhere to grab a sandwich/hang out with our buds/feed the children in our local area. "Why," someone cries "Let's pop on over to Fred's and see what's hanging." According to the menu, their breakfasts, subs and salads, French dips and cakes are "best served 68 floors above New York City." Apart from just blatantly encouraging pissed teenagers to climb on the roof to "better sample the sub" (Yeah, go on Gaz, 'ow's the gammon up there? Watch out, 'e's dropped the gravy"), it's a completely pointless claim when you are in fact not serving it 68 floors above one of the world's most throbblingly vibrant cities, but in a cardboard-partitioned section in Tesco Extra in west London. Kudos. The menu also states the meats used are "locally-sourced", which again is pretty frigging pointless if you aren't going to - y'know - tell us where they're sourced from ("Bit o' scrag end from that cow at the back of the fridge'll do, Bert"). And the pissed teenagers are just gonna LOVE the single-entendre dip section - you want your sandwich "naked", "wet" or even - double snigger - "double wet"? Gak Gak Gak Gak. They are startlingly on-trend with the whole "dirty food" concept, but there's dirty and there's just plain BAD and WRONG and SORT OUT YOUR MENU-ESE...
Ok, so the menu's not winning our us over. But is the concept such a bad thing? Because when you actually think about it, for many of us in this country, a supermarket is the one place you can actually depend on to give you what you want. There may not be a pharmacy/dry cleaners/key cutters/ independent twee farm shop/public toilet near you and your supermarket - when you're tired and harassed and it's raining and your toddler is for some reason hitting puberty NOW - can provide all of this and a cup of coffee under one roof and IT'S ALL OK. We wouldn't all choose to eat in a supermarket, but for some of us a supermarket's Grab & Go sandwich section might be the only lunch option, so wouldn't it be lovely to sit down and have something hot and have a break for 10 minutes for not much more money?
The other mystifying aspect to all this is that - and this is another IMPORTANT FACT - Tesco already own Giraffe and a 49% of coffee chain Harris & Hoole (remember the hoo-ha?) so why in the name of all that is domination aren't they using them? Capitalism aside, both of them were/are decent eateries, so why not go with what you've got rather than try to jump on the bandwagon of street food? It all seems a bit mixed up; surely Giraffe in particular would be more consumer-friendly than a glorified porn-sandwich shop? It's neither one thing or the other: cool kids who want to eat trendy food aren't nipping down Tesco's of a Friday night to hang out with their mates and daytime mothers and nans aren't going to be ordering a "double-wet gammon lettuce wrap" (which is entirely possible) with their coffee and tantrumming toddler. Sort it out Tesco, it's still under construction.
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