“It’s an area of the economy where Britain is a true world leader – really good at food retail and really good at food manufacturing, particularly short-shelf-life food manufacturing.” So said Patrick Coveney, the boss of sandwich maker Greencore, two years before (1) UK food retailing reached crisis point and (2) his company seemed to tire of finding Britain’s top spreaders and dollopers to assemble its products.
Still, neither Coveney’s inverse clairvoyancy or Greencore’s starring role on the front of the Daily Mail after getting caught in Hungary on a recruitment drive (“Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?” the paper screamed) seem to have held Coveney or Greencore back.
With impeccable timing, the boss was named personality of the year at food manufacturing excellence awards on Thursday night – where attendees sauntered off a Park Lane dance floor at about the same time as Greencore staff kicked off the day fondling the white sliced. Meanwhile, the City loves the company’s shares almost as much as its prawn sarnies.
The group unveils results this week and analysts at Oriel purr: “The UK [business] should benefit from a pretty constant process of consumers substituting bought, manufactured sandwiches for homemade.” Or, to put it another way: is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?
Kingfisher’s DIY SOS
Tempting as it might be to run a contest to find the British company that’s inflicted the most misery on its own customers, the competition would be so fierce that the effort would prove self-defeating. The time explaining the rankings to the scores of disappointed losers would simply be overwhelming.
Still, informally a strong contender might be Kingfisher, the owner of DIY retailer B&Q, which, due to the nature of the products it sells, has been tormenting shoppers for years. What other business allows its clients to set out with lofty intentions of sacrificing their own time to save the family’s funds – only to leave them stranded on an interminable project where their efforts are ridiculed by an unappreciative spouse, they frazzle their fingertips with a couple of hundred volts, and they end up paying more for a pro to clean up after somehow managing to flood the bathroom floor?
Which is why there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude about how the current Kingfisher management is wrestling with its own efforts at self- help. It will unveil a trading statement this week that might not look as pretty as hoped. Please try not to smile.
The Black Friday ruse
In five days it will be Black Friday, which depending on your view is either a) the day after American Thanksgiving, when retailers begin the Christmas shopping season by offering outrageous discounts, or b) the day after American Thanksgiving, when shoppers are manipulated into acting like a bunch of complete numpties.
This might be acceptable behaviour if you happen to be American, as you’re presumably more concerned with the flesh wounds being inflicted by your underpants following another mammoth turkey gorging. But there is no such excuse available to other nationalities, which is why it’s so perplexing that this day, and its equally irritating sibling, Cyber Monday, appear to be catching on here.
Any psychologist will tell you that it’s all a neat ruse. You may have saved £150 on some television you arguably didn’t need, but you compounded that error by carelessly slipping into your basket another gadget that you certainly didn’t want.
“It’s a manipulative plot that’s not new in the shopping industry,” addiction expert Dr Vera Tarman told Global News last time. “If you want deals, you have to get them in within a certain period of time. It gets the mind going.”
Expect increasing numbers to ignore her once again.
