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Stranger in a Familiar Land...
Aug. 25th, 2014 10:50 amI'm back from 2 weeks in the UK. I'll discuss Loncon3 another time.
To be honest, I'm still thinking about the weirdness of being a stranger in my homeland. This is the longest trip I've had to the UK since we moved to the US in 2007, and the first where we did some self catering and therefore spent some time in supermarkets. It was an interesting experience and something that triggered some waves of nostalgia and also some interesting questions.
There's a conceit that food in the United States is plentiful and cheap. It's certainly the former, but my time in the UK leaves me questioning the later. I'll come back to restaurants later, but supermarkets are the main thing for now.
So here's my revelation. Not only, with one exception, is food cheaper in the UK, but the quality is now significantly higher. The exception being meat prices, where I'd estimate the US has a 10-20% price advantage, but even that has limitations.
Fresh produce, on the whole, was astonishingly cheap in comparison. A 1kg bag of new potatoes in a Waitrose (which maps to Whole Paycheck really on the insanely pricey scale) was 1.50GBP, compared to a similar bag in my local supermarket at $5.99. A loaf of freshly baked artisanal bread was also around a quid fifty in Waitrose, compared to $4.99 and up in my local QFC. Salad, fruit and other items were all similarly discounted. Cheese? A piece of good cheese was the price of a blob of Orange 'something' in the US. The strange thing being the range. The same space is given over in either country to the products, but in the US there's actually less choice. There is the illusion of choice, but in reality the options are variations on the same thing. Especially in cheese. You can pick between different types of cheddar, with some options on craft cheese, but you can pick multiple options on craft cheeses, for example. All of which are selling for a fraction of the cost of the US version. Wine is the same. Coffee? A 500g bag of coffee in Waitrose was 2.99, compared to $8.99 upwards in Seattle, a town hardly known for it's shortage of local coffee roasters.
I've touched on the ready meal thing before, and also the canned produce thing, where a tin of tomatoes is about a quarter the price in the US.
The only significant difference was in the meat counter... but even there the differences were large. FAR more choice in the cuts available - especially of beef and pork. An entire chilled compartment given over to lamb - shoulder, leg, chops, rib roast etc... Yes, the prices were higher than in the US, but it was more than countered by the fresh produce difference. Then there was the deli meat options. Pate, LOTS of pate. Ham... cooked ham was probably two thirds the price of an equivalent here. We bought a pack of sliced ham for 2.50GBP, the closest I could just find in my local QFC would have been $7.99...
I'll not mention the Wine, but the UK does have a built in geographic advantage on that one.
Still, it's shocking to see the difference so close up.
To be honest, I'm still thinking about the weirdness of being a stranger in my homeland. This is the longest trip I've had to the UK since we moved to the US in 2007, and the first where we did some self catering and therefore spent some time in supermarkets. It was an interesting experience and something that triggered some waves of nostalgia and also some interesting questions.
There's a conceit that food in the United States is plentiful and cheap. It's certainly the former, but my time in the UK leaves me questioning the later. I'll come back to restaurants later, but supermarkets are the main thing for now.
So here's my revelation. Not only, with one exception, is food cheaper in the UK, but the quality is now significantly higher. The exception being meat prices, where I'd estimate the US has a 10-20% price advantage, but even that has limitations.
Fresh produce, on the whole, was astonishingly cheap in comparison. A 1kg bag of new potatoes in a Waitrose (which maps to Whole Paycheck really on the insanely pricey scale) was 1.50GBP, compared to a similar bag in my local supermarket at $5.99. A loaf of freshly baked artisanal bread was also around a quid fifty in Waitrose, compared to $4.99 and up in my local QFC. Salad, fruit and other items were all similarly discounted. Cheese? A piece of good cheese was the price of a blob of Orange 'something' in the US. The strange thing being the range. The same space is given over in either country to the products, but in the US there's actually less choice. There is the illusion of choice, but in reality the options are variations on the same thing. Especially in cheese. You can pick between different types of cheddar, with some options on craft cheese, but you can pick multiple options on craft cheeses, for example. All of which are selling for a fraction of the cost of the US version. Wine is the same. Coffee? A 500g bag of coffee in Waitrose was 2.99, compared to $8.99 upwards in Seattle, a town hardly known for it's shortage of local coffee roasters.
I've touched on the ready meal thing before, and also the canned produce thing, where a tin of tomatoes is about a quarter the price in the US.
The only significant difference was in the meat counter... but even there the differences were large. FAR more choice in the cuts available - especially of beef and pork. An entire chilled compartment given over to lamb - shoulder, leg, chops, rib roast etc... Yes, the prices were higher than in the US, but it was more than countered by the fresh produce difference. Then there was the deli meat options. Pate, LOTS of pate. Ham... cooked ham was probably two thirds the price of an equivalent here. We bought a pack of sliced ham for 2.50GBP, the closest I could just find in my local QFC would have been $7.99...
I'll not mention the Wine, but the UK does have a built in geographic advantage on that one.
Still, it's shocking to see the difference so close up.
