Is this the best supermarket in Britain?

It's been a while since the last post due to a bit of travelling. On those travels i came across Booths. I'd read about it before in the odd Sunday supplement but never had the good fortune to walk into one. What i experienced is how i think everyone wants a supermarket to be, quality products, value for money and old fashioned values in a comfortable, contemporary setting.

Unassuming from the outside

Clearly something was amiss the moment i walked through the door - not only was i confronted by a wheelbarrow extolling the virtues of the locally sourced veg, the veg in question, new potatoes, had mud on. Mud?! on veg? in a supermarket?

Stop Press - dirt on supermarket veg

Unnerved, i ventured down a few 'tinned' aisles - no bus stops, no 'great value' messages, just well signposted products, clearly priced. That had the inverse effect of making deals standout even more.

Clean, well lit shelving

I've never walked through the freezer section of a supermarket and thought 'what a pleasant place to shop, i must hang around here a bit longer', but that hanging around is usually inevitable given it's the hardest part of the store to navigate with everything behind glass doors or stowed away in chests. the picture below is the freezer section at Booths, though it could be easily mistaken for Carluccios, if that place had a freezer section.

A freezer area you don't mind hanging about in

This really pleasant ambiance and fresh food cues continued through the bakery and fresh food areas, with nice little touches like 'proper' scales, information on suppliers and a mushroom section that resembled something more like continental Europe than North West England.

Fresh Bakery section - ovens to the right

The Wine & Spirits area used curved shelving to create a bit of an oasis of calm (not that it were needed), again, the feel was more like a specialist wine seller than that of a supermarket, the friendly staff and 'tasting' events reinforced that further.

But it was two areas of the store in particular that resulted in me needing a double take. Everyone knows fresh orange juice from supermarkets is rarely that, fresh. So why not take a leaf out of the food market book - and squeeze it there and then, straight into the bottle. High quality, as fresh as you will ever get it and because of the theatre and transparency over what's in the bottle - the higher price point is justifiable for the shopper.

Freshness has a big impact on another product, ground coffee, so at Booths, they take a leaf out of the coffee shop book and sell the beans allowing you to grind them there and then to your desired taste before sealing and enjoying at home only hours later. Similar to the Orange Juice experience, you can tangibly see the quality of ingredients and the added value which again makes the price premium more justifiable.

I walked out through the suitably pleasant check outs wondering whether we'll see the big 4 looking more like this in a few years time. I hope so.