Do you use small shops?

Do people use small shops as well as supermarkets? Does anyone use markets for fruit and vegetables?

The market in our City is in the centre so you would need to pay to park & the last time I went in there most of the Greengrocers & small butchers had gone. It was a market full of cheapo rubbish.
Unfortunately the council who run the market, charge, I think £30 a day for a stall for the farmers market yet only £6ish for a daily stall to sell dross. Sad.
I like shopping in one of the suburbs. They do have a greengrocers but unfortunately it's not very good, a good butcher, who does wonderful pies & pasties. A 99p store, Co op, Lidl, card shop a couple of clothes shops & several charity shops as well as a Lidl. They could do with an independent bakery, I lived just into Cornwall for years & we had 2 of the best bakeries ever.
I have a Spar 100 yards from me so get bits & pieces from there.
I'm not very good at going out & supermarkets are my idea of hell, I hyperventilate getting out of the car, so try & go there as rarely as possible.
I would love a proper high street, or group of shops, unfortunately, for convenience we stopped using them. Then when post offices closed that was the end of so many of the neighbourhood shops.
A big gripe of mine, in this day & age with community almost on it's knees, we need a focus.
Kick away my soap box before I really get going.

We shop at a local supermarket rather than one of the big boys, they stock a good selection of locally produced things. We don't have a market in the town but we do use a local bakery and greengrocer. I buy craft stuff from a local shop and the man bought his bike and gets his bike stuff from an indie bike shop, I buy my workout gear from an indie sports shop. We've bought lots of the small electricals, paint, DIY stuff and accessories for the house from local shops too. On the occasions I don't make cards for people we buy them from one of the local shops. Oh and we buy clothes from the two small department stores and an indie clothes shop too. We visit the locally owned cafes most of the time too even though we have the chain coffee shops.

I would say our biggest downfall are books and bedding. We do have a great bookshop but sometimes Amazon is just soooo much cheaper. We have discovered we have a second hand bookshop though so we've started going there. And we have a local curtains and soft furnishing shop so we'll nip in there when we next want something and see how the prices stack up.

I buy my potatoes and eggs from the local farm, (sack of spuds £6, dozen eggs £1.50) I use the local chicken shop for well yeah chicken and tesco online for everything else.

i wrote a reply dont know what happened?

We have a small shop so are passionate about them. I realise there is a place for supermarkets and use them too. I do think their marketing is aggressive and that they are abit to big now but hey ho. I use the market sometimes for fruit and we have a small greengrocers in town. I sometimes get bananas at a particular supermarket because you can buy them loose which is handy if you dont want a whole bunch.

Never buy strawberries from the supermarket they are so expensive, use the market or the greengrocers. Grapes we eat alot of. Find them reasonable in aldi. Keep them in the fridge they are lovely especially the red ones.

tenerifeprincess wrote:i wrote a reply dont know what happened?

We have a small shop so are passionate about them. I realise there is a place for supermarkets and use them too. I do think their marketing is aggressive and that they are abit to big now but hey ho. I use the market sometimes for fruit and we have a small greengrocers in town. I sometimes get bananas at a particular supermarket because you can buy them loose which is handy if you dont want a whole bunch.

Never buy strawberries from the supermarket they are so expensive, use the market or the greengrocers. Grapes we eat alot of. Find them reasonable in aldi. Keep them in the fridge they are lovely especially the red ones.

Did you watch the programme last year, Bring back the High Street, or something similar?
I think that places would be so much nicer to live if there were the little shops.
I'd like to run a corner shop.
Is your a general shop or specialist one?

its a specialist one and yes i saw the programme about the high street.

Got no choice but to use the local small shop
I'm remote, the nearest supermarket is over eighty miles away. Wish I had the choice though!
It's a Spar that is the size of most folks livingrooms. Prices are roughly three times the average supermarket and because of space and fuel costs for shelf stocking, choice is limited.
There are no farmers markets here either, no farms really, it's all crofting and fishing here.
I bombarded Tesco with emails asking could they deliver here and apparently we're about the only place in Britain they won't deliver to and have no intention of doing.

where are you?

I use our local butcher a lot and they also sell fruit/veg/eggs/cheese and bread (although the bread is not to my taste) I get many BOGOF packs from and even then their prices are so much cheaper.

The big supermarkets are aking our eyes out and I dread going in them when I have to.

I have to say though that I am impressed with Asda's clothing range. The quality is ok.

tenerifeprincess wrote:where are you?

In the Cape Wrath area, far north west of Scotland.

yes our local nearest village has only small shops and we much prefer it.

the biggest supermarket is small and does us fine.

if we go to one of the big towns we find we spend three times the amount.

we also buy eggs and veg from the farmer down the road. i love that x

I try to use the small shops....local butcher is a good friend so usually go to him, there's a fruit/veg shop near which have a good stock of fresh stuff.

We are lucky in the fact that we have an out of town Tesco's and a Lidl. I hate Tesco's with a vengeance, hate going in, hate how they're taking over the country....ooooo....they make me angry! (can you tell? lol)

I buy lots from Lidl and other local shops. We used to grow potatoes, and we still do, but they now go to the crisp factory nearby, so none are suitable for mash etc.

Another friend grows veg....so he brings me a veg box every fortnight when he's doing his rounds and its lovely veg going to grow some of our own veg next year, mainly ptatoes I think and salad stuff.

I use the local shops (what's left of them) but don't do all of our shopping there. It depends on what's needed. I venture into town now and again but only when it's necessary. There's a good butcher approx a mile away - have shopped there for many years. There used to be a good choice of local shops on the main road but they've gradually been replaced with an ever increasing range of take-aways. (At the last count, 9 take-aways and a restaurant that also does take-away food within a distance of approx ¼ of a mile on the same road!) It's a pity, because previously you could get everything from the local shops without having to go into town. There's an A*di, L*dl, Mr A and Mr T Express on this side of town and I go into A*di when the mood takes me. However, if I'm not shopping locally that day then I'd rather use some diesel and go to Mr S.

Red Doe wrote:

tenerifeprincess wrote:where are you?

In the Cape Wrath area, far north west of Scotland.

Can I come and live with you? I live in Manchester, which I love, but my dream is to live in the wilds of Scotland. My Mum died in Scotland last year (while we were on holiday visiting her) and I can't face going at the moment, because she loved Scotland more than anywhere in the world. One day...

I'm on a bit of a mission to find some local shops atm. Once the school hols are over I'm going to cycle around some of the nearby small towns and investigate (will count them as days out ). Not so much for food probably (although have sourced a farm shop which sounds amazing and very cheap, but at 30 min drive away can't go too often) Whoopsies in Mr S/Mr M are too good to give up even though I would like to support the smaller shops

Did find an amazing flower shop which sells lovely garden plants this week, which was ludicrously cheap! Literally half the price of the garden centre/B and Q etc so that is now my default place for that.

I dont really use many small shops as we just dont have them here its sad. I always said I was born too late as i would have loved to go to the local shops every day and get just what we need and meet all the other homestylers doing the same. Our high street has charity shops, iceland, superdrug, boots and semichem we do have one butcher and two independent chemists as well, the butcher is extortionate but I do use the chemists.
the rest of the street is taken up with estate agents, bookies and boarded up shops its quite depressing really, would love to have a greengrocers here but i suppose the little shops just cant compete with supermarkets and its a shame because I would use them if they were available. on the outskirts of town we have tesco, lidl and argos and thats about it

lollyfin wrote:I dont really use many small shops as we just dont have them here its sad. I always said I was born too late as i would have loved to go to the local shops every day and get just what we need and meet all the other homestylers doing the same. Our high street has charity shops, iceland, superdrug, boots and semichem we do have one butcher and two independent chemists as well, the butcher is extortionate but I do use the chemists.
the rest of the street is taken up with estate agents, bookies and boarded up shops its quite depressing really, would love to have a greengrocers here but i suppose the little shops just cant compete with supermarkets and its a shame because I would use them if they were available. on the outskirts of town we have tesco, lidl and argos and thats about it

I moved from a small town a few years ago & the greengrocer was still thriving, his stuff was really fresh & much cheaper than the supermarkets. Most of the stuff in the supermarket is kept so cold that as soon as you put it in a kitchen it goes off. I can't stand fruit kept in the fridge so like it out where I can see it.
The Safeway opening on the edge of town did kill off 3 butchers shops in double quick time, one had been open for about 4 generations. Very sad.

We have a big Asda being built at the moment open early next year. We already have plenty of supermarkets i can just see load more food waste when this is built.

our local farmers market closed they only had 4 stallholders.

our local market is walking distance, but unless I want to shop daily it's not an option. the food doesn't last unfortunately.

I use Aldi, Lidl and Iceland and the Pound shop and Savers. Not much money

marciared wrote:I use Aldi, Lidl and Iceland and the Pound shop and Savers. Not much money

personally I find aldi to be comparable with tesco and asda on veg. no checked lidl. I don't like iceland's froen meat but their fresh stuff is ok.

We have just had an independent record shop open in town. I wonder if it will last. The others we had closed down. Nice to see an independent though,

Our butchers is on part time opening now and I think hes hanging out till the new year and then he will be gone. His prices are really high and his meat is not very good so I give him a wide berth. Greengrocer has gone, bread shop gone although we have the ubiquitous greggs which I avoid and our Co-Op closes today and I stood at the entrance debating whether to go in and decided against it when I saw the row between two doris's over cat food! Mr T opened a year ago and like others, I cant stand the shop and only go in as a last resort. If it wasnt for the library and the usual selection of charity shops which I frequent for crafty bits, I doubt I would wonder into the high street twice a week. Bahhh humbug!