This has happened every Christmas for years and years. Whether it is 5p or 10p or 15p, it might as well be free. The supermarket is losing around 50p per bag.
They're hoping you do your full Christmas shop with them and buy loads of overpriced party food and last minute gifts.
They're losing a lot more than 50p a bag. Absolute minimum margin would usually be 30% plus the cost of transporting them, paying for someone to fill the shelf, energy costs, marketing etc. Its nuts really because when you're spending £100+ on your shop do you really change supermarket to save 90p... The answer I guess is yes or they wouldn't do it. At least the farmers get paid at normal price
If i remember A-Level business studies, its a loss leader. Gets people in the door and the 40p they loose on a bag of spuds gets made up by the £5 box of Quality Streets they bought
Exactly, Quality Street isn't an essential. It's not like electricity or a train ticket - you don't have to buy it. Inflated prices stick when people encourage them by buying it. Obviously the price of cocoa, energy, wages etc. are a part of it for Nestle or whatever, but some of the time it's just profiteering and too many mugs fall for it - stop it!
Their brownies are lush. Pink iced doughnuts also good. Jam ones =crap
And actually their cheese straws pair well with soups you might make from the veg.
As others have said, it's usual and what's called a "loss leader".
If they get you shopping, attracted by the super cheap veg, there's a pretty good chance you/any other customer will feel inclined to keep shopping and get other stuff which they'll more than make up the loss from. Most people going shopping for Christmas food will be buying lots more than the veg, so the shop will make a lot of money off that, especially given how expensive a lot of Christmas food is.
This applies outside of the holidays too. Things like basic veg, milk, and bread, are often things shops either get basically no profit from or lose money on. But people buy them so often that they can bank on people going in for them and getting other stuff with a way better return for the shop on.
A neighbour farmer supplies Lidl with carrots and potatoes. They still get paid their full price and it's a massive benefit to the farmer as people buy more and it gets rid of the excess they used to be left with.
Apparently this means that he now has to work harder in the summer growing grass for silage as the excess vegetables used to feed his cattle, which fertilise the fields to grow more veg. I never used to think about how much planning has to go into farming.
It's called loss leaders. You marked down something massively to get word of mouth going so people come to the shop for the 5p veg, as they are going to the till they see other things they need that they might have bought at a different shop or impulse buy other Christmas items.
I mean, just roast whatever veggies you like in the oven (onions and shallots halved or quatered), generously covered in oil and seasoned with salt, black pepper, and either dried or fresh diced chillies for heat. Also pick up a nice big garlic bulb when you're in the store and bake it too, but wrapped in foil, with the top chopped off.
After everything is baked, pick out the onion, shallot and garlic (push out the delicious paste from its skin prison), add all to a stockpot along with flour or cornflour to create a roux, optionally add paprika here if you skipped the chillies if you want the extra flavour, then the rest of the baked veggies, and finally pour in your stock. Blend for a nice, thick, hearthy soup and serve either in a bread bowl or with plenty of bread slices to dunk into the soup.
Are these cheap veggies worth bulk-buying, does anyone have any tips on preserving them? Besides pickling everything haha. Thinking of making soup with some of the cheap Tesco veg (carrot, potato, broccoli) and freezing it, maybe?
Potatoes can be cut into chips and frozen, or made into jacket potatoes and frozen, carrots can be cut to size and frozen, or pickled, any soups can be made in bulk and frozen
Been stocking up at Christmas and Easter for years. We slice the veg and freeze, like buying bags of frozen sliced carrots. Bonus points if you have a chest freezer to fill with veg and half price meat! Whole leg of lamb was £10 in Tesco last week, we got 3 and sliced it before freezing it. Potatoes can be stored in a shed/somewhere dark, dry and cold in a cardboard box for months. Just don’t massively stack them.
Soups and stews! I just made a huge pot of roasted root veg stew and tomorrow I'm making broccoli cheese soup. Most soups and stews freeze really well. Also potatoes will last a long time kept in cool dark conditions so I'm grabbing some extra bags
Buy a decent American-style fridge!
Honestly, my meat and vegetables last for a lot longer than when I had a shitty fridge.
I got a Hisense fridge freezer for £500 on Amazon the water tray broke and I complained, and they gave me the fridge freezer for free, 😆
I have been purposely clearing my freezer to make room for all the veggie soup that I'll be making when the cheap Christmas veg rolls in. I've planned for those reductions.
Some carrots, some parsnip, some swede, lots of onion and garlic, some lentils, cumin, tumeric and a little chilli. Add in some nutritional yeast with the stock cube and I'm stashing away health food that will see me through January. In the past it's worked out at pennies per portion, even with rounding up a bit for the cost of cooking.
aldi are really strict on only letting you take a max of 3, or they were last year. I ended up paying a little more at Sainsburys to make a good stash of soups to see me through Jan
That sucks. You have to do a breaking bad and get a small amount from all kinds of different stores, maybe wear disguises, so the cabbage authoritarians dont catch you ;)
Tuesday is the day! And I do keep a headscarf in the car so will do double rounds. The man was looking in my basket last year (I'd picked up whiskey for my dad). Bizarre that he was counting cabbages of all things
I'm looking forward to the 27th the most. I've resisted all of the German gingerbread so far, but last year I went and got a look of party food and smoked salmon half price, and a good saving on the dips and fridge bits
Happens every year. Its a stunt so you go buy other stuff. Vedge is relatively cheap in comparison to everything else. So they make it a loss leader as they dont make much on it anyways and so they just cut the price loads for the good marketing and people talking about it. You will see other supermarkets do similar. Sainsburys is 8p
Wow, it’s the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon, don’t know how or why. Ex-Londoner now in Cornwall. The London supermarkets usually run out of the veg by the time I go.
I saw a video of a farmer speaking about this on Twitter the other day. He said the only way they can do this at Christmas is by squeezing farmers on price the rest of the year.
Not saying I bought into it, just saw it and watched the first bit before moving on.
It’s called a “loss leader”, they want you to come in and spend your money with them rather than any other supermarket. They are willing to make a loss on some things to get you in the door.
Is it your first Christmas? This is so common - it’s a loss leader to get you in to buy other things. Same reason everything has unfeasibly short dates in the run up to Xmas, to hope you’ll be back in again to replace something and accidentally fill a trolley
Loss leader, designed to tempt people into the store where they'll spend money on other things.
Meanwhile, over the preceding weeks, they will also have been incrementally putting up the prices of all the other Christmas staples - brandy butter, double cream, Christmas cake etc, to recoup money against the loss leading veg.
I would like to know how many people here would actually change where they shop based on this. For example Waitrose Christmas veg is 40p, would you not go there because Morrison's is 5p?
🤷🏽♀️ when I look for veg at this time of year there’s always empty shelves. Luckily, I caught it this year and now I know why. I’m new to this 5p veg phenomenon
Morrisons reduced their veg to 5p so Lidl and Aldi followed suit. There were no spuds in my local Lidl today left in their 5p offer unfortunately. I did get 3 bags of posh shallots for 5p each though
Its called loss leading. All the supermarkets do it every They reduce the cost of the christmas dinner items to below what they paid (to attract customers) who then go on to do a full shop. buy more sweets/party food items' alcohol, last minute presents etc.
Loss leader, everyone needs veg so it draws them into the shop and then they spend gazillions on all the Christmas stuff they have. It’s the most profitable time of the year for retail so they need to do anything to get the shoppers into their store rather than into another
Morrisons did the exact same thing. Did my online order today and they were 5p a bag. I assume they must have shed load. Last year they had a genuine sprout mountain. It looked like something from a farm.
Loss leaders, hoping to get you in the doors and stock up. I bought a lot, got it mass cooked and frozen down.
Bought a few bits but nothing I didn’t need
If you leave it right until the last minute it's not uncommon to get free ones.
One of my trainees got a turkey for a quid last year from Lidl just before they closed on Christmas eve
Company buyers overbuy,warehouses get overpacked,customers don't buy until the week of Xmas,store staff explain to their bosses,the bosses tell their bosses,office staff decide on prices,company buyers never learn,rinse and repeat.
This is pre-planned to the nth degree; nothing to do with bad buying. It’s the most important time of year for retail and every customer you win is massively beneficial, this is one tactic among many to win them
No, and as a pensioner I don’t understand why I’ve never seen this before. Can only think it was coz I was living in London until a few years ago, now in Cornwall. I do remember seeing the veggie shelves/boxes empty though in Camden.
Sainesburys might be worth a shout, I've always got my fruit from M&S and go straight to pay, so I don't get tempted by other items. I've never had Sainesburys veg, but the other options are awful
Sainsburys tends to be the best/longest lasting of these options, I tend to only buy fruit and veg from sainsburys or m&s unless I'm intending to eat what I'm buying the same day as others don't last. Got a bag of 15p carrots today, they look fine
This has happened every Christmas for years and years. Whether it is 5p or 10p or 15p, it might as well be free. The supermarket is losing around 50p per bag.
They're hoping you do your full Christmas shop with them and buy loads of overpriced party food and last minute gifts.
Hmmm. I could make a years supply of sprout curry🤔
Does the Geneva Convention mean nothing to you?
It's not a war crime the first time ;)
Pretty sure releasing toxic gas has been a warcrime for at least a century
Ooh is this an actual recipe?
Not really in its own right. Its a Thai Red curry with UK 'seasonl veg', sprouts work really well surprisingly.
I put some sprouts into an Indian chicken curry the other week. It worked well.
Nuremberg trials for this person too
So I found out recently that saag paneer and Palak paneer are the same kinda.
Saag is green leaves. Palak is spinach.
But you could fry the sprouts, mash / add water and blend down and use in place of the spinach.
Seriously, achari sprouts are the bomb. Just saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/dec/21/meera-sodha-christmas-recipe-vegan-achari-brussels-sprout-curry
It's limited to 3 of each a shopper.
This is food or what?!
They're losing a lot more than 50p a bag. Absolute minimum margin would usually be 30% plus the cost of transporting them, paying for someone to fill the shelf, energy costs, marketing etc. Its nuts really because when you're spending £100+ on your shop do you really change supermarket to save 90p... The answer I guess is yes or they wouldn't do it. At least the farmers get paid at normal price
it's called a loss leader. gets you in the store and then they get you with that pesky middle aisle
I am basing that 50p on the fact that most of the items being sold are 50-65p outside of Xmas.
Yes gets people through the doors
I mean, the shallots alone are usually a quid or more a bag, down to 5p is basically stealing from them.
Also, everything goes back to "normal prices" after Xmas.
Isn't this a typical reduction for this time of the year?
Yes but every year a new batch reach the level of maturity where they decide to host Christmas and make this discovery
So this has been a thing for a long time? I assumed it was just over the last few years
If i remember A-Level business studies, its a loss leader. Gets people in the door and the 40p they loose on a bag of spuds gets made up by the £5 box of Quality Streets they bought
They’re £7 now. Absolute robbery. And half the size of when they were a fiver.
I've bought all the boxes for family coming over this year and the most I paid for any of them was £4.75. £3.75 for the Roses.
Out of season I've seen them at £7+ but I'd keep on walking if they said that this time of year.
Exactly, Quality Street isn't an essential. It's not like electricity or a train ticket - you don't have to buy it. Inflated prices stick when people encourage them by buying it. Obviously the price of cocoa, energy, wages etc. are a part of it for Nestle or whatever, but some of the time it's just profiteering and too many mugs fall for it - stop it!
Yeah it was about 2 weeks ago so could’ve been before the Christmas discounts got applied. Ended up finding something a bit cheaper
Yeah that's mental!
I'm always surprised Aldi/Lidl haven't jumped on to making these at Christmas.
They’d make a killing with slightly cheaper own brand tubs
Imagine if they were the old sizes as well!
I know Iceland did it, no idea how good or bad they are but it shows there's room for it.
Fingers crossed for next year ay!
Absolutely
Costco sells a 2kg metal tin for around 20 quid.
To be fair I spent £5 on some christmas lights and another £5 on a festive gravy jub when my wife sent me to aldi for some 8p veg.
Spot on.
One 5p bag of veg will cost me 2 brownies, a cookie, a doughnut and a cheese twist.. theyve got me good.
Their brownies are lush. Pink iced doughnuts also good. Jam ones =crap And actually their cheese straws pair well with soups you might make from the veg.
Cannot skip over their bakery section. I definetley overspend in that area.
Have you been out of the country? It happens every year in the U.K.
As others have said, it's usual and what's called a "loss leader".
If they get you shopping, attracted by the super cheap veg, there's a pretty good chance you/any other customer will feel inclined to keep shopping and get other stuff which they'll more than make up the loss from. Most people going shopping for Christmas food will be buying lots more than the veg, so the shop will make a lot of money off that, especially given how expensive a lot of Christmas food is.
This applies outside of the holidays too. Things like basic veg, milk, and bread, are often things shops either get basically no profit from or lose money on. But people buy them so often that they can bank on people going in for them and getting other stuff with a way better return for the shop on.
Is normal. Is happening every year closer to Christmas and Easter.
I think is an amazing initiative as this way everyone can enjoy the holidays.
I've never seen it at Easter?
I think it’s only been at Easter time for a couple of years now, a lot more normal for it to feature at Xmas
Long may it continue. I live cheap, quality food!
What about the farmers?? It seems sad that their efforts are worth so little.
A neighbour farmer supplies Lidl with carrots and potatoes. They still get paid their full price and it's a massive benefit to the farmer as people buy more and it gets rid of the excess they used to be left with.
Apparently this means that he now has to work harder in the summer growing grass for silage as the excess vegetables used to feed his cattle, which fertilise the fields to grow more veg. I never used to think about how much planning has to go into farming.
I assume that farmers are paid the same regardless the price in the supermarket.
5p in Morrisons today as well its great cheap veg loss leader
They always do this
It's called loss leaders. You marked down something massively to get word of mouth going so people come to the shop for the 5p veg, as they are going to the till they see other things they need that they might have bought at a different shop or impulse buy other Christmas items.
So who has a good veggie soup recipe for all this cheap veg?
I mean, just roast whatever veggies you like in the oven (onions and shallots halved or quatered), generously covered in oil and seasoned with salt, black pepper, and either dried or fresh diced chillies for heat. Also pick up a nice big garlic bulb when you're in the store and bake it too, but wrapped in foil, with the top chopped off.
After everything is baked, pick out the onion, shallot and garlic (push out the delicious paste from its skin prison), add all to a stockpot along with flour or cornflour to create a roux, optionally add paprika here if you skipped the chillies if you want the extra flavour, then the rest of the baked veggies, and finally pour in your stock. Blend for a nice, thick, hearthy soup and serve either in a bread bowl or with plenty of bread slices to dunk into the soup.
I will upvote all of this except skin prison
That's fair!
Are these cheap veggies worth bulk-buying, does anyone have any tips on preserving them? Besides pickling everything haha. Thinking of making soup with some of the cheap Tesco veg (carrot, potato, broccoli) and freezing it, maybe?
make carrot and swede mash and then freeze it is a option
Yes. My family bulk buys carrots this time every year, cooks, mashes and freezes them for use in soups and curries.
Potatoes can be cut into chips and frozen, or made into jacket potatoes and frozen, carrots can be cut to size and frozen, or pickled, any soups can be made in bulk and frozen
I bought a bunch of carrots and spouts and froze them. I used a recipe like this
Last year my mum bought 10kg of potatoes... Lots of potato curry and jacket spuds!
Been stocking up at Christmas and Easter for years. We slice the veg and freeze, like buying bags of frozen sliced carrots. Bonus points if you have a chest freezer to fill with veg and half price meat! Whole leg of lamb was £10 in Tesco last week, we got 3 and sliced it before freezing it. Potatoes can be stored in a shed/somewhere dark, dry and cold in a cardboard box for months. Just don’t massively stack them.
You're only allowed a max of 3 each item a shopper.
Soups and stews! I just made a huge pot of roasted root veg stew and tomorrow I'm making broccoli cheese soup. Most soups and stews freeze really well. Also potatoes will last a long time kept in cool dark conditions so I'm grabbing some extra bags
5p in Morrisons too
Buy a decent American-style fridge! Honestly, my meat and vegetables last for a lot longer than when I had a shitty fridge. I got a Hisense fridge freezer for £500 on Amazon the water tray broke and I complained, and they gave me the fridge freezer for free, 😆
5p? I paid 8p at Aldi yesterday for sprouts. 60% more- I've been ripped off!
Aldi is 5p today. Veg warrrrrrs
Same! And I bought 3 bags! I feel robbed
Happens every year. Got all my 8p veggies from Aldi today!
This has been going on for at least a decade now, how have you not noticed?
Back then it was 20p a bag and each year it gets lower and lower.
It’s called Christmas. We have it most years. It’s when the big supermarkets screw over the farmers just a little bit more.
First time?
Loss leaders.
I have been purposely clearing my freezer to make room for all the veggie soup that I'll be making when the cheap Christmas veg rolls in. I've planned for those reductions.
Some carrots, some parsnip, some swede, lots of onion and garlic, some lentils, cumin, tumeric and a little chilli. Add in some nutritional yeast with the stock cube and I'm stashing away health food that will see me through January. In the past it's worked out at pennies per portion, even with rounding up a bit for the cost of cooking.
aldi are really strict on only letting you take a max of 3, or they were last year. I ended up paying a little more at Sainsburys to make a good stash of soups to see me through Jan
Odd I just got 6 bags no problem
that's good. Last year he made me put 4 cabbages back. I was annoyed as I'd been collecting jars and wanted to make some pickled slaw
That sucks. You have to do a breaking bad and get a small amount from all kinds of different stores, maybe wear disguises, so the cabbage authoritarians dont catch you ;)
Tuesday is the day! And I do keep a headscarf in the car so will do double rounds. The man was looking in my basket last year (I'd picked up whiskey for my dad). Bizarre that he was counting cabbages of all things
I'm looking forward to the 27th the most. I've resisted all of the German gingerbread so far, but last year I went and got a look of party food and smoked salmon half price, and a good saving on the dips and fridge bits
Happens every year. Its a stunt so you go buy other stuff. Vedge is relatively cheap in comparison to everything else. So they make it a loss leader as they dont make much on it anyways and so they just cut the price loads for the good marketing and people talking about it. You will see other supermarkets do similar. Sainsburys is 8p
Wow, it’s the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon, don’t know how or why. Ex-Londoner now in Cornwall. The London supermarkets usually run out of the veg by the time I go.
I saw a video of a farmer speaking about this on Twitter the other day. He said the only way they can do this at Christmas is by squeezing farmers on price the rest of the year.
Not saying I bought into it, just saw it and watched the first bit before moving on.
I think those must be a Lidl stale
They’ll all have gone off by Sunday.
It’s called a “loss leader”, they want you to come in and spend your money with them rather than any other supermarket. They are willing to make a loss on some things to get you in the door.
Is it your first Christmas? This is so common - it’s a loss leader to get you in to buy other things. Same reason everything has unfeasibly short dates in the run up to Xmas, to hope you’ll be back in again to replace something and accidentally fill a trolley
Is this the only thing not affected by inflation? It’s been like this since I was a kid. 😂
It’s no just Lidl all the supermarkets do it this time of year. Sainsburys is selling carrots and potatoes for 15p a bag
It's Christmas.
Loss leader. They want you to go in and spend other money on the temptation of cheap veg
It's called a loss leader, to entice you to buy more profitable items while you're there
Loss leader, designed to tempt people into the store where they'll spend money on other things.
Meanwhile, over the preceding weeks, they will also have been incrementally putting up the prices of all the other Christmas staples - brandy butter, double cream, Christmas cake etc, to recoup money against the loss leading veg.
I would like to know how many people here would actually change where they shop based on this. For example Waitrose Christmas veg is 40p, would you not go there because Morrison's is 5p?
5p? It was 8p at aldi.
I feel ripped off.
Don't feel too bad, it was 15p at Tesco today. 😅
I remember a couple of years back early Christmas Eve evening the local asda were giving all the vegetables away for free!
I go just for the bakery every day lol. I’ll defo be grabbing some of these almost free veggies
Will the shallots restock you reckon ?? They seem to be on very high demand to the point theres none left
🤷🏽♀️ when I look for veg at this time of year there’s always empty shelves. Luckily, I caught it this year and now I know why. I’m new to this 5p veg phenomenon
Christmas
State of the sprouts they put out at our local store last week they couldn't have paid me 5p per sprout to take them.
Every box all yellow and on the turn, no thanks.
Morrisons reduced their veg to 5p so Lidl and Aldi followed suit. There were no spuds in my local Lidl today left in their 5p offer unfortunately. I did get 3 bags of posh shallots for 5p each though
It’s called a loss leader, stock is sold at a loss, gets you inside thinking I might as well do my shop here.
The good loss leaders come out Easter and Xmas, meat and booze.
[deleted]
Don’t know? London maybe? In another dimension? Just moved out of London.
Its called loss leading. All the supermarkets do it every They reduce the cost of the christmas dinner items to below what they paid (to attract customers) who then go on to do a full shop. buy more sweets/party food items' alcohol, last minute presents etc.
Sainsbury is doing the same as well.
Loss leader, everyone needs veg so it draws them into the shop and then they spend gazillions on all the Christmas stuff they have. It’s the most profitable time of the year for retail so they need to do anything to get the shoppers into their store rather than into another
In my Lidl a bag of carrots was £1.35 🥹
Morrisons did the exact same thing. Did my online order today and they were 5p a bag. I assume they must have shed load. Last year they had a genuine sprout mountain. It looked like something from a farm.
its called Christmas 🎄
Loss leaders, hoping to get you in the doors and stock up. I bought a lot, got it mass cooked and frozen down. Bought a few bits but nothing I didn’t need
If you leave it right until the last minute it's not uncommon to get free ones. One of my trainees got a turkey for a quid last year from Lidl just before they closed on Christmas eve
Bought them with 10% off using my Lidl app - rounded down to 4p for a bag of spuds etc BARGAIN! 😁👍
Loss leaders. Get you in with cheap, and expect you to spend more throughout the store
Company buyers overbuy,warehouses get overpacked,customers don't buy until the week of Xmas,store staff explain to their bosses,the bosses tell their bosses,office staff decide on prices,company buyers never learn,rinse and repeat.
This is pre-planned to the nth degree; nothing to do with bad buying. It’s the most important time of year for retail and every customer you win is massively beneficial, this is one tactic among many to win them
Are you new to this country?
No, and as a pensioner I don’t understand why I’ve never seen this before. Can only think it was coz I was living in London until a few years ago, now in Cornwall. I do remember seeing the veggie shelves/boxes empty though in Camden.
Anyone know if M&S do this?
Nope. Money Saving Expert has a page on it, and it's Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl, Sainburys, and Tesco.
Waitrose definitely are as well
[deleted]
My order that's coming in the morning from Waitrose says otherwise, I also never said it was 15p, you did. I said it was on offer.
Try to read what the person above me actually said and my reply to them instead of being an idiot.
Sainesburys might be worth a shout, I've always got my fruit from M&S and go straight to pay, so I don't get tempted by other items. I've never had Sainesburys veg, but the other options are awful
Sainsburys tends to be the best/longest lasting of these options, I tend to only buy fruit and veg from sainsburys or m&s unless I'm intending to eat what I'm buying the same day as others don't last. Got a bag of 15p carrots today, they look fine
They did last year
Nope, they make it look like they're doing it by putting the veg out in the same way but the prices are either the same as usual or only slightly less