00:00But Tesco is kind of dynamic, or to use another word, very agile in its approach. Now, of course, the story at the moment is Poundland, which, of course, is its shtick, if you like. The difficulty is inflation has kind of stripped away that, if you like, competitive advantage.
00:18There's not much you can buy for sort of a pound, apart from maybe a couple of packs of biscuits, or sort of occasionally I've been in there, and you get sort of a multi-pack of superglue. But what I would say is that supermarkets, such as the Tescos of this world, they try and cover pretty much everything, most particularly the weekly shop. And of course, that's where the vast majority of our money goes in terms of retailing.
00:42I know that the sort of clothes shops and other sort of special things, but, you know, we don't buy new sort of clothes every week, but we buy food every other week, and certainly sort of, you know, once a week for the sort of the shop for the family.
00:53And of course, in the sort of present climate, where, of course, inflation is still sort of at 3.4%, so it's not as high as it was a couple of years ago when it sort of reached over sort of 10%, but nonetheless, it's going up.
01:05So people are having to sort of to economise, and so they're looking for bargains.
01:09And of course, in that sort of sense, the sort of the supermarkets that have done really well in recent years have been the sort of the German, really low-cost operators.
01:21Of course, you know, they're providing the sort of same sort of products, by and large, albeit, of course, that they're sort of they're often sort of brands that we don't know.
01:28And, you know, in many cases, you know, people don't notice the difference.
01:31Food prices are rising at their fastest rate in over a year.
01:35According to new figures from the Office for National Statistics, Andrew Wishart, Senior UK Economist at Berenberg, said stronger food price inflation than forecasters, including the Bank of England anticipated,
01:49suggests that grocers have enough pricing power to pass increased staff costs and agricultural prices on to customers.
01:58So for sure, you know, people sort of if they're not sort of going out as often, then of course, they do have a little bit extra money.
02:04So maybe rather than buying the sort of the, you know, the middle range, as it were, as opposed to sort of the budget range foods, they might go for the sort of the, as I've sort of described earlier on,
02:13to go one of the sort of the supermarkets, they have their finest range, spend a little bit more.
02:18And, you know, of course, I suppose, particularly in sort of the ready meals, the hope is, of course, that sort of what people are doing is to sort of buy in the sort of the vegetables and the meats and whatever else and making the sort of the meals themselves.
