Good Stuff at Co-op ?

MrsStepford

Husband has COPD and his consultant has started the process to revoke husband's driving licence. From tomorrow he will commute to Surrey three days per week by train. 

There are two Co-op stores near his office and another near the station here. We used to live in a village near Ashford which had a Co-op stuffed to the ceiling with great stuff. That was a few moons ago though.

Any good deals now or good stuff to look out for ?

TIA x

sarah1972

Our co op is vastly overpriced 

FlorayG

Join. There are deals every day for members, plus on your card you get offers such as ' buy eggs 3 times and get £1 off your shop' and things like that. They do seasonal deals as well - usually advertised on the boards outside

maman

sarah1972 said:

Our co op is vastly overpriced 

Same here, even with a yellow sticker they aren't VFM. 

Many years ago I lived near a Coop department store. That had a Food Hall with competitively priced own brand groceries and excellent fresh food counters. This time of year, seasonal fruit and veg was abundant and cheap.

Sadly, those days are gone. The Coop is all about small local convenience stores and you pay the price for the shop being on the doorstep rather than make a journey (short in my case) to a supermarket.

If you cannot get to a supermarket yourself @MrsStepford then I'd suggest an online order. 

p00hsticks

Generally quite expensive - definitely worth getting a members card for the 'members price' reductions on everyday staples like own brand bread, milk etc plus meal deals. I sometimes make use of the latter to treat myself to a prawn pasta salad bowl - £3.25 by itself, but can get a cornish pasty for OH's lunch thrown in as a 'snack' plus an Innocent smoothie for just 25p more with my members card. .

That's assuming that 'your' Co-ops are the same as 'our' Co-op - we've found when going down south that, although badge identically and with the same products, there appear to be regional differences and loyalty cards are not standard across the regions  

MrsStepford

We will soon be in the Leaves on the Line months and train delays will be inevitable. My injured knee is still improving but stairs are still a problem, so Husband does the delivery wrangling.

I will only be able to arrange supermarket deliveries for the two days that he will be working from home. It will be possible to have overnight courier deliveries from farms to arrive on WFH days and Saturdays. If he does extra WFH days it may be possible to do a same day Iceland delivery. 

We can have Milk & More on WFH days. Orders used to arrive around 0300 but since Milk & More was sold, the milkman's round has been changed. He doesn't get here before husband leaves for work now so we can only have things delivered on WFH days.  

However, without a car, it's not possible to call into supermarkets on the way home. Husband has often been calling into Sainsbury's, and occasionally at Morrisons and Waitrose for offers. They will now be a bus ride away. Our buses don't run much past 6pm and he would be too tired after getting up at  0430 to be getting on buses and waiting at bus stops. 

I am looking for replacement top up places which husband can call into on the walk from the station. It doesn't matter so much if say organic milk is more expensive in the Co-op. That would be cheaper than doing a big supermarket order more often. 

pumpkin89

I imagine this will vary by location, but the Co-ops local to me seem to be very generous with "end of line" pricing.  If they have discontinued a particular brand of something (e.g. olive oil) then the price goes very low and there is often plenty of stock available which sticks around for a few days (unlike, say, Sainsbury's, where you can get a fantastic bargain but only if you happen to be there in the right 20 minute window!)

So I would suggest to get familiar with the layout of the shop and keep an eye on reductions.

The other thing is that they do smaller packs of some fresh foods (e.g. vegetables) than other retailers.  They may cost more pro-rata, but if you're only buying for a couple it can work out cheaper in absolute terms as you're not buying more than you need.  It makes it easier to have a variety of veg rather than eating the same thing for days.

FlorayG

I shop at my local Co-op a lot. Why? Because if I go in for butter and carrots I tend to come out with butter and carrots, not a trolley full of "Oooh, that looks nice" stuff that I never intended to buy. So the Co-op actually saves me a lot of money

YoungBlueEyes

We moved here (Yorkshire) from Lincolnshire, and I liked my Lincs Co-op. I went in our new local one for a first shop of bits to get us going and there were a few bargains and some ys bits so I filled my basket. Got to the till and the woman refused my loyalty card. It doesn't work outside your area apparently, but instead of calmly explaining it she was surly and bad-tempered about it, and spoke to me like I'd just crawled out from under a rock.
So I ...said some things.... left the lot sat there and went to sainsbobs. 

Be careful of the card thing folks, that's what I'm saying.

maman

We have a Co-op shop at each end of our road. They belong to different Co-op groups. The shops have different coloured liveries, slightly different stock and separate loyalty cards. 

jon81uk

If you can get the app too.

My only use for Co-Op is the lunchtime meal deal. But as someone else has already mentioned Ginsters pasty is a snack in the deal, plus I'll often get a coupon in the app for 40p off Ginsters and 50p off certain drinks. So I can get a lunch meal deal for £2.60 if I get products with digital coupons.