Shopping Experiment

So this week I had a bit of a chuckle as a grammar pedant ranted about people beginning their sentences with "so". 😁

Ahem. This week there has been an offer in the newspaper whereby you can present a little coupon and get £5 off a £25 shop at German Affordable Competitor Supermarket (GACS). Ordinarily I would ignore this offer - in fact I managed to forget to use their "sign up with the app and get a fiver" deal last year and missed out. But this time, well, the vouchers came at me free so I wondered if I might at least stock up on some snack products to go in my lunch box. When I buy these at work, I generally only touch the "on sale" lines which is annoying and disappointing when the ones I actually want require a mortgage, so the experiment was to see whether I could get generic versions with some flavour variation.

Well. I figured this would be easy, then I stupidly began in the fresh foods section. Half way through the store and before I even got to the snacks, I'd reached the £25. Ok then... I paid, put that in the car (ready meals and yoghurts and desserts and basically food our little convenience store doesn't have) then went back for a round two and a second voucher. Only their snack selection was a bit disappointing. I did manage to reach the minimum but only by doing a second lap and buying extras. Annoyingly, I saw that some of their staple branded items were more than our price! How is that even possible? I feel like I've been sold a lie 😐

Anyway, just over £40 spent and mixed results. The "goat's cheese and butternut squash" frittata that I spotted and was so looking forward to tasted like an egg with potato cooked in, basically boring as hell. I did get a massive tub of their yoghurt potato salad which I used to buy years ago and that is lovely. The luxury lemon cheesecake was ok but not worth the luxury price tag. And I forgot to buy coffee! The horror!

Related: the horror of Pugsley not starting on an early shift and being rescued by a co-worker when no taxis were to be had anywhere in the town. Also the horror of £110 for a new battery. But hey, the one in Pugsley, which testing showed had a 9A capacity out of 300A, was the original 13-year-old battery. I definitely got my money's worth out of that and it's a miracle it was even starting most days.