Easter eggs

It was Tesco’s Edinburgh Road superstore in Perth celebrating a cracking performance in our Easter Saturday mystery shop.

This was a “brightly lit and well-presented store” in which our shopper was presented with plenty of special offers for Easter eggs and hot cross buns as she entered the store. Staff were as a rule “helpful and polite” and either took our shopper to the desired product or explained that it was not stocked.

Asda Cwmbran and Sainsbury’s in Wakefield were joint runners-up. Neither store suffered any out-of-stocks while both did not stock three of the products we were looking for.

Our shopper described Asda as “quite an old store but in good condition”, while her interactions with staff were mixed, with some going above and beyond but another not making much of an effort.

Staff were more of an issue at Sainsbury’s, with our ­shopper saying they were “on the whole extremely difficult to find, ­reasonably helpful and friendly but pretty useless”. At one stage, she spent 10 minutes looking for a member of staff to help with a query about fishcakes.

Morrisons in St Helens ­provided a “pleasant and easy” shopping experience and was clearly well geared up for Easter. Most of our shopper’s dealings with staff, including the store manager, were positive.

Our shopper’s first ­impressions of Waitrose Torquay were of “chaos and clutter”. Staff were helpful but the store had poor availability, including four out-of-stocks. Checkout service wasn’t great.