A round-up of supermarket news and gossip
IT IS now being suggested that having too many options is not good for us, and quick decisions can produce peace of mind. This is now applied to our supermarket aisles – in trying to decide what to put into your supermarket trolley. For instance a local Tesco was offering 38 choices of milk. No matter what you chose – how do you know you made the correct decision? Jam was offered with 154 flavours,107 varieties of pasta.....

Choice is aplenty; so much so that psychologist now believe it is making us miserable. Most large supermarkets provide us with about 30,000 products. They suggest that the huge number of choices that assault us every day makes many of us feel inadequate and clinically depressed says Professor Barry Schwartz a psychologist from the USA.

The wash-out summer weather has set off the nation’s craving for stodgy, ”comfort” food. Sales of pies, soups and hot chocolate are soaring while sales of salads and soft fruits have slumped, reports the Consumer Food Guide.

Welsh entrepreneur Albert Gubay in Prestatyn founded Kwik Save in 1959 as Value Foods. Using aggressive retail ideas from the USA and Germany, it outsold other discount stores and began to expand. Check out staff were trained to memorise all the prices to save bar coding. The final turn of the screw was made last month as the Kwik Save chain went into administration, resulting in the closure of 90 stores. Some staff have been working without wages for six weeks trying to keep the company afloat. The remaining 56 stores will be transferred to a new company, which will trade under the name of Fresh Express.

Nearly one in five Tesco share holders refused to back a bonus scheme that could see Terry Leahy, the chief executive, pocket an additional £11.5m.

Waitrose is planning to turn its website into a “Facebook for Foodies” by adding social networking for shoppers to swap recipes and chat about food trends on message boards. The plans were announced following the £1m+ website revamp. The company is aiming to attract 1,000,000 visitors to its site each month.

Coca-Cola is planning to set up a branded university in India to teach modern retailing techniques to millions of small shopkeepers.

Tesco moved to secure control of Dobbies Garden Centres and see off a threat from Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish entrepreneur. Tesco said that it would now require only 50% of Dobbies’ investors to accept its £156m bid.

Sainsbury may look at options to release value from its large estate of freehold stores but will continue to resist pressure to sell it off. The emergence of the Qatari-backed property investment firm as the supermarket’s biggest shareholder has complicated life for Justin King, the Sainsbury’s chief executive, who has faced calls from Robert Tchenguiz, who owns 5% of the shares, to split off its £8.6bn property assets.

Radical reshaping of the Cadbury Schweppes’ business is expected to lead to the axing of more than 5,000 jobs. Customers who became ill after eating Cadbury’s chocolate contaminated with salmonella are in line for compensation payments after the firm admitted its guilt.

Supermarket wars in London have intensified after American giant Foods Market opened its first store in London. Waitrose, its main competitor, has closed its Marylebone flagship store in order to give it a revamp. When it reopens, the store will have a breakfast bar, a home-cooked counter, a fresh-food section. For the period of the refurb, Waitrose will offer to give its customers a lift to and from the nearest store at Bloomsbury – smart move.

Wm Morrison is to name a candidate to succeed chairman Sir Ken Morrison, ending a year-long search to find a replacement. Sir Ian Gibson, the former deputy chairman of rival Asda, has apparently emerged as a strong contender. Fresh food supplier Bomfords Group, with a customer base of the likes of Tesco, J Sainsbury and Asda has gone bust over a scandal related to gangmaster tactics and paying low wages below the legal limits.

GEMINI