SUPERMARKETS

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Morrisons, in Derby, has been named the best store in the UK in a survey by The Grocer. It is published on a weekly basis and the supermarket was top in the latest edition of the magazine after a mystery customer visited the premises to do some shopping and reported on her findings. The Grocer survey provides information on price and availability at the country's leading supermarkets, including Morrisons, Tesco's, Sainsbury's and Asda.

A store is chosen from each of the major supermarket chains in eight regions and this week Morrisons' Derby branch was ranked as the best. According to The Grocer magazine, the test shopper described the store as being, "Not only clean and tidy but also well merchandised, meaning she could find items on her list easily." The magazine also said, "Although staff were extremely busy, they took time to help her and even fetched certain items for her when she could not find them."

The test shopper also observed that 26 of the store's 29 checkouts were open, meaning the shopper did not spend any time queuing and was offered help packing her bags. The survey also considers a number of other areas in relation to each store surveyed, including cleanliness and tidiness, for example, whether the aisles were free from shelf stackers and packing trolleys, whether items were easy to find and sufficient checkouts were open for customers to use, and staff helpfulness. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Jan/07)

The UK's big four supermarkets have all said they are committed to sourcing foods locally as much as possible. Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons were responding to a report which said it was most environmentally friendly to buy food that had been made locally. The report in the journal Food Policy criticised the environmental damage of transporting food long-distances. Each of the big supermarkets said they had policies to encourage and increase their supplies of local produce. A Tesco spokesman said the company was "committed to trying to source locally whenever possible, the seasons allow and there is customer demand". He added that Tesco sells some 7,000 locally produced products, and has two dedicated local buyers in Scotland and Wales. "All our products are marked with their country of origin, and within the UK, often their region and local areas of origin," he said.

The report's authors, Professor Jules Petty and his colleague Tim Lang from City University, say that people should try to buy food from within a 12-mile radius. They calculated that if all foods were sourced from within this radius, environmental and congestion costs would fall from more than £2.3bn to under £230m, due to the reduction in transportation or "road miles". Asda said it has a dedicated local sourcing unit that is separate to its main sourcing department. "Across the UK we have 200 local suppliers, many of which are very small indeed, employing less than 20 people," said an Asda spokesman. "We try and make it as easy as possible for small firms to supply to us, we do not require them to have a computer for example, only a fax through which we can send orders." He added that Asda's policy was for all its stores to sell more products from their area, "for example, our Cornish stores sell more Cornish products, and our Welsh stores stock more Welsh products".

Waitrose is currently running two separate schemes to boost its provision and support of local products and producers. Firstly, it has launched its Small Producers Awards 2005 competition to honour small businesses that make quality food and drink. And secondly, it has started two trials to give customers the chance to purchase locally farmed fruit and vegetables. These are running at its Kent branches and certain stores in Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire. A spokeswoman for Sainsbury's said it was "aware that many of our customers want to buy local produce which reflect regional tastes and traditions and have a preference for food grown or reared locally. "We are committed to giving our customers the diverse range of local foods they want and have a dedicated team who search for promising local producers as part of our local sourcing programme," she said. A spokeswoman for Morrisons said it was a "keen supporters of small, local and regional producers and have a number of local producers supplying our stores.

A new supermarket check-out is due to be launched across the country which relies on shoppers doing all the work themselves. The self-service check-outs allow the customer to scan items, put them in carrier bags, pay, and even get cash-back, all without the need for a cashier. The first of the check-outs have been installed at the Sainsbury's store in Hazel Grove, Stockport, Greater Manchester, and will be followed by a wider trial in six additional branches. The chain say if the concept is a success they will launch it across the country from later this year.

The Self Checkouts are already in use at the Sainsbury's-owned Shaw's chain of supermarkets in the US where they process more than one billion transactions a year. Customers fill up their basket or trolley in the normal way but when finished go to one of the special check-outs which is equipped with an interactive touch screen. They are asked to pass the barcode on the product over a scanner and then place it into a carrier bag situated on a set of scales. Fresh produce, such as fruit and vegetables, are weighed in advance and given a sticker with a barcode.

Every item in store has had its exact weight entered into a computer, allowing the check-out to tell exactly what has gone into the bag and cutting down any risk of theft, according to Sainsbury's. After all the groceries have been packed the customer can either pay with cash by inserting a note or debit or credit card. Sainbury's say only a small number of self-style check-outs will initially be installed and that the majority will remain the traditional version, complete with cashier. They must already realise that the majority of the British public would not be able to handle this one?

The Sainsbury's store in the Eagle Centre will be the first of the chain's outlets in Derbyshire to introduce self-scanning checkouts. There will be four of these machines, which will allow people to scan and pay for their goods without the help of a cashier. Shoppers will walk around the store as normal, putting items into their baskets and will then scan their own goods and pay by cash or card. Maureen Warwick, customer services manager of the Eagle Centre branch, said that the store had been chosen for the pilot study because of its busy city-centre location.

Miss Warwick said, "If the trial goes well, they'll be installed in other Sainsbury's stores in Derbyshire. It's to help us with queues so that, at busy times during the day, customers can have a quick exit." Miss Warwick said that she did not think that it would increase theft in the store because only scanned items can be placed in the carrier bags, which are attached to sensors. "The swiper will log the weight of each item and will flash up a message if it doesn't recognise the weight of something placed in the bag," she said. There will be one shop assistant to oversee the four checkouts.