Sainsbury’s wins best supermarket in our Reading mystery shop

While officially a town, Reading has the scale, amenities, and economy of a small city. Located in Berkshire, about 40 miles west of London, it’s part of the Thames Valley Tech Hub – often known as “the UK’s Silicon Valley” – thanks to its hosting of major companies including Microsoft, Huawei and Oracle.

This commuter hotspot is incredibly well connected to the capital – particularly since the opening of the Elizabeth Line – and thus unsurprisingly overindexes on the ‘thriving neighbourhoods’ and ‘established affluence’ demographics identified by CACI.

On the western outskirts of the town, the huge 75,331 sq ft Sainsbury’s on Bath Road came out on top this week and was crowned the best supermarket in Reading. According to CACI, it does well with portions of Reading’s more affluent population, and it performed just as well for our shopper, picking up an impressive 87 points.

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The victory was built on availability – it was the only store this week to pick up a perfect score of 20 – and, indeed, our shopper said she shops here regularly as “it’s always well stocked and has a good variety of products”.

This is an “attractive” shop that’s “light and bright”, making for “a pleasant shopping experience”. And although staff were generally “pleasant”, our shopper found they “didn’t want to move from their stations to help with items not directly in their aisles”.

It was a real Goliath v Goliath battle this week in the top two spots, as second place went to an equally gargantuan Tesco on Napier Road, which is much closer to the town centre than our winner. Despite its proportions, though, Tesco was hit by three items not being stocked – one of the key differences in the battle for first and second.

It did, however, perform exceedingly well on customer service, with our shopper noting there were “a lot” of staff around. All three he approached were “polite” and “took the time to walk me to the location” of the items.

He noted the store’s “good selection” of products but did find it “very busy” with “a lot of staff working on delivery orders”. These staff were “doing well” to keep out of customers’ way, but “there were so many of them that I would not return at such a peak time”.

Third place this week went to Morrisons off Basingstoke Road to the south of the city, which also performed best on customer service. As with Tesco, staff here were plentiful, “warm and friendly” and seemed very happy to escort our shopper to correct aisle, with one pointing out the item on the shelf.

Our shopper also “really liked the fact this store still has manned counters, meaning customers can be provided with help and advice if they need it”.  Though this was tempered somewhat by the space feeling “quite disorganised”, with “untidy” displays, making it “difficult” to find some products on the list.

Our smallest store at 31,806 sq ft, Waitrose came fourth this week with somewhat middling scores pretty much across the board. Once again, customer service was where it made the best impression, with our shopper noting it was “easy” to find staff when required.

It is, however, “quite an old store that hasn’t had a revamp in many years”, according to our shopper, while the fact customers have to pay for parking “puts me off”.

Finally, the only store to drop below the 70-point mark this week was Asda on Chalfont Way, way out to the southeast of the town. The store posted this week’s lowest score for availability, although our shopper did note that it was “very clean and well presented”.

The service was “inconsistent”, though, with one staff member “extremely helpful” and another “not very helpful”, making no attempt to check for the product our shopper had enquired about.