Sainsburys DKH

[Lynne]

They seem to be experimenting with how few staff, how random a product availability and how few working terminals are needed to run a store. And why was the car park full this morning but the shop as empty as usual? Hiring out the spaces? What do customers matter, after all

[Jules-and-Boo]

The DKH one is dreadful - mainly due to the customers. Nasty shopping experience. We go to Waitrose or elsewhere.... gave up on DKH when we were abused by a member of the public.

[Manuela M]

Broccoli stalks for sale in Sainsburys yesterday !

Broccoli stalks for sale in Sainsburys yesterday ?

[colb2015]

Was thinking the exact same the last day I was in there. The amount of empty or near empty shelves was shocking, and this has been going on for quite some time now. Not sure if it's a staffing issue or what. As I've noticed similar issues in Tesco Herne Hill and Brixton at times.

One potential cause could be down to DKH now being used as a hub for online deliveries, rather than a centralised warehouse site. There's always quite a few staff flying around filing multiple online orders. It must be having an affect.

[jazzer]

Lose mushrooms are another regular casualty as is blue top 2 pint fresh milk.

There was a long period when fresh milk was regularly unavailable.

Very much seems to be a case luck of the draw when you go to DKH at present.

[Bic Basher]

It's a Sainsbury's wide issue. Forest Hill also has similar issues with stock and reducing self-checkouts in operation.

[owlwise]

This is the result of leaving the EU. There's no other reason.

[jazzer]

So long stalk broccoli, one pack of loose mushrooms a day and lack of milk is because of leaving the EU???? And the evidence to support your supposition is? please can you expand........

[twinhunters]

Disabled toilet kept locked and staff find it hard to locate key . Also yesterday I brought a meal deal went to checkout and the drink was from a multipack deal so no barcode . Spoke to manager as was held up at till , trying to sort problem, she was quite rude and dismissive. Store gone downhill , it’s dirty , not well stocked and it’s so annoying how they keep changing things around .

[jazzer]

Moving things around aisles/the store is the stores way of making you search out the products you want to purchase and they hope you'll see other items as you look that they hope you'll buy them, all it does is extend the length of the shopping "experience"

[eve b]

and why have they moved everything around?! Can’t find anything now..

[Penguin68]

As posted above, that's intentional. Additionally, when they stopped counter serving meat, fish and delicatessen stuff (Covid!) - they freed up a lot of space which they had to use somehow. They do now have a halal and veggie area, which is good, and their sushi offering has expanded.

Some shortages (i.e. real Dijon Mustard) are caused (in that case) by draught and fire ruining the mustard crop in France - others equally are not to do with trading issues. Some are related to lack of CO2 gas for freezing or preservation (ironic, isn't it, not enough CO2!). A lot of veg (in terms at least of quality) have been impacted by low/ no water available.

There are. of course, some trading shortages and shortages linked to the lack of cheap casual labour for harvesting- but in truth Brexit has not had a major impact on the grocery trade as such, there are many other pressures on it.

[jazzer]

Tesco (OKR) had own brand Dijon mustard in stock last week.

[jazzer]

Perhaps the lack of labour to bring in the Broccoli crop is the reason for such long stalks, who knows.

[Lynne]

I read on Sunday that the product moving is not the supermarket's fault (so a small apology to Sainsburys). New gov. regs. say that "unhealthy" foods must be a minimum distance from the checkout. The regs. are impenetrable, as you might expect and are causing confusion and extra work. For instance, coco-pops are OK but most mueslis are not.

The lack of certain products, the shortage of working tills, the difficulties in getting round the store because of all the staff loading up for deliveries, no trolleys sometimes, is not the Govs fault though

[ianr]

Any chance of the the regs' name or some sort of direct or indirect linkage please?

[ETA] OK Lynne, I've found it. The Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/1368/schedule/1/made, which came into force on Saturday. I can see it being problematic. To be included in the placement ban a food has to be both (a) in the long list of specified foods (Schedule 1) and (b) scoring more than a specified minimum using formulae specified in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nutrient-profiling-model. By my interpretation that would include, for example, any ready-to-eat breakfast cereal or muesli that fails (b). I wouldn't be surprised, though, if others reached a different construction of parts of Schedule 1 or had problems with the calculations bit.

The regs' explanatory memorandum explains, btw: "The purpose of this instrument is to restrict the promotion of high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products by location and volume price in medium and large businesses that sell food or drink in England (50 or more employees). "

Edited October 4, 2022 by ianr

[Penguin68]

Tesco (OKR) had own brand Dijon mustard in stock last week.

Sainsbury also has its own brand 'Dijon style' mustard, but it's certainly not from Dijon (and is harsher than 'Dijon' mustards actually from Dijon) - Moutarde de Maille is the brand you most normally find in the UK (or rather, don't at the moment)

[jazzer]

Generally self check out tends to be quicker than queuing for a till with a checkout person, but one question, why have Sainsbury's shut the exit at the far end of the store by the self service tills, now making everyone enter and leave through one set of doors at the store entrance, very weird, bearing in mind Autumn is here and I'd have thought they'd revert to one entrance and one exit to reduce the chances of passing Covid on.

[Sue]

Easier all round to just get groceries delivered, I have found, once you add up the costs in time, fuel (if driving) and general inconvenience of shopping in person.

Not that I use Sainsbury's if I can help it, after some bad past experiences.

[se22]

No idea why the exit has been closed, but it was open again yesterday.

[jazzer]

Easier all round to just get groceries delivered, I have found, once you add up the costs in time, fuel (if driving) and general inconvenience of shopping in person.

Not that I use Sainsbury's if I can help it, after some bad past experiences.

 

Personally I prefer to go in person and pick what I want, especially for chilled and fresh items. Their "pickers" have no concept of use by dates or quality of produce.

[Lynne]

It's the Food (Promotion and Placement) England Regulations 2021 that came into effect 1/10/22, Ianr

[ed26]

It's a pathetic little dirt hole of a store. Huge queues for the only staffed checkout. One person supervising the self-scan and scan & go checkout, so you can wait for ages for them to be free if there's a problem. I got yelled at the other day for pushing the gate open when my receipt wouldn't open the scan & go gate the other day and had been waiting for ages for someone to help me. And don't even hope that there may be someone available to help look for an item after everything has moved.

I was invited in to meet the manager years ago when I complained about empty shelves (not a post-Brexit thing) and incorrect prices on items. He admitted he was shocked at how many little things can add up to a big frustration when shopping - prices on shelves relating to a 300g item but only 200g and 400g items on sale; multi-buy offers more expensive than single items; no individual fruit and veg in stock but huge stock of the same items in plastic bags; different prices on the shelf compared to the checkout; wrong items on the shelves, and so on.

He did say that we can unwrap bagged goods to buy them individually as a last resort, but I've never had the nerve to do that. I would gladly snap the stalks off those broccoli before weighing them though.

You would think that Sainsbury's would be trying to up their game with the rise of Lidl and Aldi......

[Penguin68]

No idea why the exit has been closed, but it was open again yesterday.

It's still open (Wednesday 5th morning). In the past it has been closed if there's a problem with the automatic door mechanism, so it may have been that.

[hammerman]

I wondered why Sainsburys had shut the main entrance out of the store for some time, but then when they brought in that one had to scan their receipt to get out of the basket shopping area I think it's probably to do with the high incidence of shop lifting in the store.

Shop lifting equals loss of earnings for Sainsburys. This must have an effect on staff numbers but then again with Christmas coming up they must need to keep and retain staff and deal with what's happening in store.