The People's supermarket (Channel 4 TV programe)

I was wondering if anyone has been watching this and what you think?

I've seen the first two episodes Although I think it's a great idea, I think a lot of the criticism Arthur has come in for about making it too "middle class", organic and expensive is right. I would really like to see it work, but he does need to stock the pizza and chips Josie mentioned. In fact he should get Josie to plan the stock for him!

For a supermarket to succeed it has got to appeal to everyone, whatever their income and whatever they like to eat. One mustn't make judgments about other people's diets and preferences. I couldn't get over the woman who responded to the request for chips with "Can't you make them?"

I also think the idea that everyone must be a member to shop there is making a rod for his back. He could have got some financial backing if he was not so committed to this idea. Mary Portas tweeted that she thought it was brilliant and would like to join but was not sure she could spare 4 hours a month to work there.

But it's a good GREEN idea and he's a lovely man.

Lamb's Conduit Street isn't too far from where I work and I may visit it one evening.

His model sounds very similar to the Out of this World chain of shops ....I think there is still one in Beeston, but the rest finally went bust...I invested in them as it was a Really Good Idea and was a members Co op etc ...and you had to join to shop there...but sadly it went under a few years back.

I suspect he is running into similar issues....where people who are passionate about stuff have a bit of a hard time understanding those who are not. Which isn't very viable in a supermarlet environment....

Just a quick post to say I went and did some shopping at the People's Supermarket today as it is only about 10 minutes away from where I work.

I was pleased to find it quite busy, with lots of customers and volunteers. I got there around 1.30, so I imagine quite a few customers were on their lunch break.

It was well stocked and had a good range of fruit and veg, salad and herbs. I bought some celeriac, parsnips and carrots. The carrots will need eating quickly. The potatoes all looked good, but I had to take all I bought home on the tube and on foot, so I was limited with what I bought. I was pleased to find cucumbers were only 50p.

Obviously the range of choice is going to be limited but there was the option of buying Cadbury's drinking chocolate or Divine (fair trade) There was quite a lot of "Community foods" stuff, which is simply packaged. And there were also some bins of "fill your own" for lentils, plain flour, white sugar, basmati rice.

I bought a slice of carrot cake from the kitchen which was the best I've ever had.

The shop is smaller than it looks on TV. It was clean and the shelves were stacked neatly, but the "fill you own" bit was not very well placed, displayed or explained and there seemed to be some duplication of display for the cucumbers and other veg. This is a comment not a criticism.

I will go again but I will still need my Ocado deliveries! I've had one tonight because we were running out of soya milk, orange juice and various other heavy things.

Are the delivered groceries common in UK? I worked, briefly, for a startup a number of years ago in Illinois that went bust for lack of public interest. Seems most people in the US would rather burn gasoline driving their boatmobile to the store every time they need a loaf of bread. Sad.

Yes, delivering groceries has become quite a growth area over the last 5 years or so.

I go through phases of using them. They were great when I was working full time. I got less enthusiastic when they started charging for deliveries and some of the slots can be quite expensive but I was offered a good deal on a one year "season ticket"

I like to see my meat before I buy it so on the whole I use them for staples and heavy or bulky stuff. And I had a lot of boxes of eggs with one cracked so tend to buy eggs from the shop. Some of the shelf lives can be a bit short. I did have some eggs delivered last month and discovered that their best before date was only a week after deliver; those I buy in the shop would be two weeks or more.

And one tends to avoid impulse buys!