Tesco Ebbw Vale wins top supermarket in the East Wales Valleys

The Welsh valleys run from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park to the coastal plain around Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Characterised by steep-sided valleys with towns and villages dotted along valley floors, the area was one of the world’s most important coal-mining regions from the mid-19th to mid-20th century.

Towns such as Ebbw Vale were once industrial and steelworking strongholds but are now undergoing regeneration. A major redevelopment on the former steelworks site there, known as The Works, is bringing new facilities and infrastructure to Ebbw Vale, while the town has also benefited from improved rail links to Cardiff and Newport.

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Nearby Cwmbran was also heavily linked to mining and heavy industry, with many residents employed in that sector, but the designated New Town was always larger and more suburban than neighbours Ebbw Vale and Abergavenny. It’s something of a shopping hub, with a large shopping centre and plenty of pubs, restaurants and leisure facilities.

Abergavenny, meanwhile, was historically a market town rather than a mining town. Picturesque and full of independent shops and cafés, it was described as “down-to-earth but upwardly mobile” with a “fine foodie flavour” when being named Best Place to Live in Wales by The Times in 2024.

Of these three close but very different towns, it was Ebbw Vale that provided the best supermarket in the East Valleys. Located on the town’s northern outskirts, the 35,487 sq ft Tesco on North West Approach took first place with 83 points. Its best performances came on tills & checkouts and customer service, with our shopper noting the “thing that stood out” was the plentiful staff “who went out of their way to find products” that were missing from shelves and then “restocked the shelf for other customers”.

Our shopper was also pleased with the “minimal queues” at checkouts despite the “large number of customers in the store” and remarked on the checkout colleague being “polite and friendly”.

Eleven miles east in Abergavenny, close to the River Usk, Waitrose on Merthyr Road took second place this week with 77 points. The store was hampered by availability issues (as were several of our stores this week, post-festive period), with three out-of-stocks and one item not stocked a key factor in the race for first.

Its scores elsewhere were much better, though, with a perfect 10 on features and services. Our shopper described the store as “very clean” and praised staff for “offering very good customer service skills”. He added this is his regular supermarket due to “its accessibility for parking, wide aisles, customer-focused colleagues and ease of using mobile apps/scanners instead of queueing”.

A rather large gap existed between second and third place this week – 14 miles and more than 20 points. The Sainsbury’s on Llewellyn Road in Cwmbran picked up just 56 despite posting this week’s best performance on availability.

That spoke to a disappointing set of scores elsewhere, with our shopper noting gaps in the fruit & veg aisle and remarking that the store “seemed very low on staff”. Indeed, it took him “nearly seven minutes” to find a staff member on the shop floor, while a staffing issue at the checkouts led to “people complaining”.

Back in fourth on 47 points was Asda at Ebbw Vale’s Lakeside Retail Park, which our shopper described as “busy” with “a few empty cardboard cages” and “an abandoned shopping basket and trolley” on the shop floor. He also disliked “the random locations of items”, such as sugar not being near tea/coffee or the baking area, and defined staff interactions as “mixed” – though he did describe one colleague’s excellent customer service “when he obviously had a lot of shelf-stacking work to complete” as his abiding memory of the store.

Last place this week went to Morrisons on Beaufort Road, a few miles west of the centre of Ebbw Vale. The store picked up just 36 points, starting with a zero for availability thanks to seven items being out of stock. Our shopper found it “extremely difficult to find assistance from a team member”, and those that were there “appeared to be actively avoiding customers”.

Overall, there was “nothing about this store I particularly liked” and she will “remember it as being unwelcoming and unpleasant to shop in”.