Address: 174 Footscray Rd, Eltham

Opening hours: 7-10pm

Price at the pump: Unleaded 119.9p Diesel 121.9p

Morrisons fascia

After the M Local debacle, Morrisons has dipped a nervous toe back into the convenience market with the limited launch of Morrisons Daily. And on this showing the fascia has a better chance than its predecessor.

Morrisons logo

Price analysis

At £20.48 this basket from Morrisons Daily was pricier than Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose (although at 119.9p its unleaded petrol was the cheapest of the lot).

It was also cheapest on the lasagne ready meal and the PG Tips. But what really stands out is how much more it costs to shop for the same items at Morrisons Daily than at a regular Morrisons - a hefty 27% more, the biggest price differential across all the supermarkets.

Even if you consider that the grab bag of Walkers cost 90p compared with a regular bag (which costs 60p in the supermarket) and subtract that 30p difference the basket still comes out at 25% more expensive. The biggest differences were for the Ben & Jerry’s (£3 vs £4.50) and the bottle of Blossom Hill (£6 vs £7.70).

There were definitely issues though. At 9am there were only two sandwiches on offer, the fresh fruit and veg was nearly empty, as was the chilled fresh food - there was only one pack of sausages and a scattering of ready meals (including the lasagne) left.

Whether this was down to supply issues or staff resources wasn’t clear, but it didn’t look good. However, the overall effect of the store was impressive. Obviously the store is very new, but it was smart, neatly laid out with low level shelving islands, which made the compact space light and open and everything easy to find. Green signage running around the entire store made the design cohesive.

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The Blossom Hill was swapped for a Blossom Hill Grenache, and there were only Grab Bags of Walkers, which added around 25p to the price. Service was friendly and polite, and the assistant packed my bag.

 


Food to Go 2/5

Morrisons has made more of an effort than rivals with food to go, with a hot cabinet, filled with pasties, toasties and bacon baguettes, twice the size of the cabinets at Co-op and Waitrose.

morrisons to go

And it was sat next to a Costa Coffee machine. But just because it’s hot doesn’t mean it’s good. Housed in plastic wrap on a cardboard tray, this was billed as a ham and cheese toastie but was actually a croque monsieur, topped with béchamel sauce. This made it greasy to slide out of its tight plastic wrapper and to handle on the go.

My first bite failed to dent the leathery strip of ham. When I eventually bit through it the ham was tasty, the béchamel sauce better than average, the bread hard around the edges. The best I could say is that a bite from the middle of the sandwich was not terrible.

Related files/tables

Fascia Face-off Part 2: the supermarkets