Poor families miss out on budget ranges at big chains’ smaller shops, says Which?

theguardian.com:

Low-income families are missing out on the chance to pick up supermarkets’ lowest-priced essentials as fewer than 1% of the leading chains’ smaller stores stock them, according to a study.

The consumer group Which? dispatched mystery shoppers to hunt for a list of about 30 items under the cut-price own-label ranges in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons stores, including apples, beef mince, tinned tomatoes, rice and instant coffee.

On average, the biggest supermarket stores had 87% of the products researchers were looking for, or an equivalent product in the same range.

However, in small Tesco Express, Sainsbury’s Local and Morrisons Daily convenience stores, the budget own-label items on Which?’s list were available less than 1% of the time. Asda does not have a large number of small stores and so it was not included in that part of the study.

Of the 35 small stores from the three chains visited across the country by Which?’s mystery shoppers, 30 did not have in stock any of the budget-range items on the list. The remaining five stores only stocked one item from the list each.

Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation lobby group, said: “We know that a great many people are really struggling at the moment, with food insecurity among children having doubled in the past year.

“Low-income families simply can’t afford to travel to the larger supermarkets and are forced by their environments into using smaller stores. A Food Foundation survey in January found that 78% of lower-income households said they’d like retailers to make budget ranges available in every store.”

Sue Davies, head of food policy at Which?, added: “At a time when millions of people are struggling to put food on the table, it’s shocking that