@Baboonery

I was referring to the 'unknown' brands in Lidl. Not the like of Heinz.

Lidl own brand products are made to look like unknown brands. They don't brand their own brand products as "Lidl" in the way that Sainsbury's etc do.

All these different shops sound great to use. Only problem is as a non car owner it would take all weekend to do my weekly shop.
Sainsburys may have some faults but it is a 3 minute walk away, think they'll still be getting my custom.

@iwereabsolutelyfuming

I agree with you. The biggest problem with supermarkets is that they DO screw over suppliers, although Sainsbury's are better than many and the Co-operative and Waitrose are pretty good with suppliers and the latter supports smaller producers. All 3 have championed Fairtrade products especially and Waitrose and the Co-operative have their own farms…in the UK.

You wont find many producers that have kind words to say about Tesco.

Whatever you think of supermarkets, they are successful. Local shops should learn from what they do, how they market themselves etc. It's free research!

Monday night's Panorama titled "The Truth About Supermarket Price Wars" was akin to a tour-de-force of every practice developed by the supermarkets in which it was difficult not to conclude that there is no other credo for them except "never deal the punter an honest hand" or "never make a savings offer that we cannot claw back twice over".

Tow-fers that were not. three-fer-twos that were more expensive than three items, price establishing (a practice that says an item formerly sold at say £1.50 was sold at a Scottish airport our Outer Hebridean store at £3 for twenty eight days) and when the supermarket dropped the price back to £2.50 the punter was getting a "great" offer and not to mention the ever-present "Manager's Specials" from the JS ********** family

Great and informative BBC broadcasting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01...rice_Wars/

Its not just the supply chain that gets turned over by the predatory supermarket chains.

Far be it from me to defend supermarkets, but there have been numerous investigations into whether or not they rip off suppliers and each time no one is able to prove anything. They just have significant buying power, which means people queue up to supply them. As for Sainsbury's I think it is expensive but at least they stack stuff on shelves, unlike the scuzzy supermarkets where you have to grovel in boxes on the floor. I hear that in some you have to butcher the meat yourself and the veg still has soil on it. I've never been to one, this is just what I hear.

Maybe that's why Tesco's have much better fruit and veg than Sainsbury's.!

I will keep these places in mind when next shopping.
I shop around not just for bargains but for quality of the food.
I have found for example that the meat and fish in Morrison is better than the one in sainsbury and that vegetables in Lidl last longer than the other supermarkets, especially if you are careful to chose them without getting the rotten one inside the pack.
However looking at the quality being in Waitrose and M&S the other day, I realise that they have better quality, although you have to pay a bit more. But if the price is only questin of pennies, why not to get the best qualiity, instead of the rotten one. Some of the reduced food that Sainsbury put on display for customers sale, should not be there at all, always with rotten things inside and still at high prices.
Apart from this, I hate the game they play to reduce the items at a very high price around early afternoon and then they do at different time but if you are prepared t buy them say around seven o'clock, they won't give you the last price of the day, which is what you probably were prepared to pay for food which they are going to thow away, anyway if they do not sell it on the date, but they keep you waiting till 9.00 or 10.00 pm. How crazy! befor shrinkage was sold to staff at the end of the day for a nominal value, but they would never sell rotten food for a nominal value. I used to work for M&S years and years ago in their food dept, but for health and safety if anything rotten, would go in the bin, nevr sold to a customer or to a mmber of staff.

Sydenhamcentral - you are right about Lidl "own brands" not being branded. Though there is another twist - Lidl (and Aldi) are a major force in the retail landscape now and are often supplied by major brand manufacturers who will also supply to much more pricey outlets across Europe, at lower volumes and higher margins. You may not recognise the names of the supplier, but that doesn't mean they're not a huge supplier.

This has been the case in Germany for 20+ years where Aldi for example is the single largest grocery retailer in the country and dictates many a large food suppliers revenues. They bargain very hard with these suppliers (and some would argue not very ethically), who will do almost anything to get onto the Aldi preferred supplier list because it guarantees high sales (though at a tiny margin, obviously) but the truth is that what you buy there is often high quality fare packaged up cheaply and sold cheaply.

It's interesting that people seem to fall for Lidl's fake brand approach and that some people even think that it's not true!

Another twist Tinkerbell is that the same suppliers for M&S Indian ready meals also make Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's (there are 3 companies. Same goes for almost every other supermarket and and brand good.

BUT they are not all the same. Each supermarket has their own development chef/s appointed (see the Leiths commercials for ASDA recently) and they have different costs per unit. Generally the more expensive the ingredients, the better the products. Products by the same supplier can vary a lot. I've been to some taste tests, you will surprised who makes what!

But that goes for many Brands too. There isn't a huge factory making Persil or Fairy Liquid. They are actually made under license by companies such as Remploy who make lots of products for lots of brands…and own brands.

On another note, anyone ready Mary Portas's report on High Streets? It's excellent.

This post was last modified: 13-12-2011 08:03 PM by sydenhamcentral.

A Which report states that supermarkets invent location names to label their food sources/origin, but these places do not exist.
Articles on daily newspapers reported it today.

Did you read it in The Sun?
I'm not saying it is untrue (far from it), but I'm aware that The Sun is printed in Wapping and not on a star 93m miles away.

There is also a chocolate bar on the market that is made in Slough rather than the Red Planet, as it's name might lead one to believe.

Are you trying to tell me those aren't real monster feet in my Monster Munch?!

To call an imaginary fish farm 'Lochmuir', as M & S have done, is a own goal, I'd have thought.The unlikely combination of Gaelic 'loch' with Anglo-Saxon 'muir' is a dead giveaway.

Whilst I agree in principle with robin o's sentiment - I have to disagree with his etymological attribution of Muir being anglo-saxon.

With all the usual acknowledgements:

"The Scottish surname Muir originated as name denoting someone who lived beside a moor."

and

Originally from Ireland, the Muir family's contribution to Scot's victory at the Battle of Largs secured the family seat at Rowallan Castle, near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. Currently Clan Muir is viewed by some as a sept of the Clan Campbell and Clan Boyd.

Last I looked, my home county of Ayrshire is still located in Scotland, ergo the name is firmly of pict/celt/scots/irish origin.

Not much room for anglo-saxon derivation there.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/muir

Rough translation - 'Sea Loch', which is where all salmon farms are located, rather clever. But I do feel a bit cheated to find out that M&S don't have their own loch. I guess the clue was the TM after Lochmuir.
http://www.marksandspencer.com/Pre-Slice...B00194DHK6

I did a bit more checking and found this:
http://www.scottishseafarms.com/en/our-s.../loch.html
So it turns out that M&S do have dedicated farms for their fish to ensure the quality. Roughly what I had hoped for even if Lochmuir ™ does not really exist.

This is better than when they claimed all their underpants had been personally stitched by St Michael.

As I understand it, 'muir' is the Scots form of the modern English 'moor'. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both derive from the Old English 'mor.' That makes sense if I am right in believing that, more generally, (Lowland) Scots is largely derived from a Northumbrian form of Old English (Anglo-Saxon); this is a result of the settlement of much of southern Scotland (including Ayrshire) by Northumbrian speakers in the early middle ages.

So I would suggest that even if the Muir family are of Gaelic origin, they must at some stage have adopted a Scots (i.e. non-Gaelic) surname.

Ah, I see that Michael has now informed us that 'muir' means 'sea' in Gaelic. I do not know whether it follows that there could be a place name 'Lochmuir' meaning 'sea loch'; it sounds unlikely to me, but I shall of course bow to superior knowledge. Meanwhile, I am still inclined to the view that the inventors of the name had the Scots word meaning 'moor' (as in Stenhousemuir, Kirriemuir) in mind.

This post was last modified: 15-02-2012 05:37 PM by robin orton.

Yup - it would seem Old Irish muir was derived from mere meaning sea.

Lalland (lowland) Scots developed in Northern Ireland and Lowland Scotland - and for first time I have been made aware that it is considered an English dialect born of Northumbrian English.

It was the native language of Burns.

Makes you proud to be British.

Michael,
I don't read the Sun!
I read the article on Which website itself:

QUOTE:
Don't fall for creative food labels says Which?
Supermarkets are using fiction to sell products
13 February 2012

Manufacturers and supermarkets are increasingly using creative language to sell their products – even if it means creating place names that don’t exist.

Marks & Spencer sells 11,000 tonnes of Lochmuir salmon every year while Tesco sells thousands of chickens from Willow Farm.

But neither of these places exist.

Both are marketing inventions used by M&S and Tesco to brand their salmon and chickens.

M&S also uses the name Oakham to brand its chickens. Willow Farm and Oakham chickens come from farms all over the UK while fish farms across Scotland supply salmon for the Lochmuir range.

Creative food labels
The use of a place name can create the illusion of a more personal shopping experience like a farmers’ market or evoke images of a specific location.

And with more of us interested in where our food comes from than ever before, clever branding can help sell products.

Which? research has shown that place of origin and provenance is important to consumers.

In 2011, Which? surveyed 1009 members of the public and over half said they always or sometimes look at the provenance of their food.

72% said it's important that provenance labelling is on meat and 73% said the same for dairy.

There are no rules about using names of specific or fictitious locations to brand products – unless it has Protected Geographical Status (PGS).

Stilton Cheese, Melton Mowbray pork pies and champagne all have PGS and have to come from the region stated in their name.

Homemade or Hearty?
But fictitious locations aren’t the only way manufacturers and retailers entice you to buy their products.

In the supermarket consumers are bombarded with labels using creative language. But it’s not always clear which terms have true meaning and which are just 'marketing speak'.

The words ‘homemade’ and ‘hearty’ allude to feelings of comfort and make products sounds appealing, but only ‘homemade’ has guidance on how it can be used.

Factory-made foods cannot use 'homemade' on the label - only products prepared in a domestic kitchen can make this claim.

Other words such as crisp, succulent and rich provide a sensory experience and are known as ‘weasel words’ – employed to encourage a purchase.

Word play
More confusing can be the vast difference between words such as 'flavour' and 'flavoured'.

Yop strawberry flavour yoghurt drink need never have been anywhere near a strawberry and can mean artificial flavouring.

But Tesco's strawberry flavoured milk has to contain the real ingredient.

A closer look at the packaging of Covent Garden Wild Mushroom soup shows that it contains only 0.6% dried wild mushrooms but 18% of normal mushrooms.

And Homepride Beef in Ale sauce contains only 4% ale, no beef stock and 38% tomatoes.

Which? says
Which? campaigns for honest claims and clear labelling. We want consumers to get the products they think they’re paying for.

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, said: ‘Some of the labels commonly found on shop shelves, while not illegal, hide the real contents of a product or are confusing to customers. The food industry must do more to make sure people get what they think they're paying for.’

More on this...
If you spot other examples of exaggerated, confusing or meaningless claims on food or drink packaging email us details and a photo to foodeditor@which.co.uk
Tell us what annoys you about food labelling. Have you ever bought something to find it’s not what’s described on the pack? Join our conversation at http://www.which.co.uk/foodlabelling
Get involved in our Which? campaign for clearer pricing in supermarkets


Read more: http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/02/dont...z1mTHsrhlI
Consumer Champions Which?
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial

UNQUOTE

I've read the Which Report, I think it's slightly unfair.

There are tight restrictions on supermarket packaging. If a fish is farmed you can't show a boat on a loch catching the fish for instance. If it's strawberry flavoured (and contains no strawberries) you can't put a real strawberry's on the packaging.

When you photograph supermarket products for packaging you have to use the actual portions in the shot, the actual product and cook it according to instructions. You are allowed to dress the product for photography, rebuild it so it looks good, but you can't add anything that isn't there. It isn't allowed to appear much bigger on the packaging than actual size.

We worked on Tesco Finest produce a few years ago and the farmers and farms on the packing were the actual farmers producing the food.

I know about Lockmuir, it's just a name (I worked at M&S designing packaging) for the range. Lidl do this on ALL their own brand packaging (none of it is labelled Lidl, they make them look like unheard of brands), Tesco started doing the same with the 'discounter brands'.

Brands have been making up fake brand names since time began. Uncle Ben has nothing to do with the rice and is fictional
There was no Betty Crocker
Dr Pepper was fiction
Superdry clothing is fake and in reality has nothing to do with Japan and speedway
Yo Sushi is a British brand, not Japanese
The Windsors changed their name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha due to being at war with Germany in 1917.
But
Coca Cola really did have cocaine in it.