Anon please: Okay – I’m going to be brutally honest here: I do not like the new Salisbury Waitrose. What was wrong with the old one? What happened to the old adage: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’? I used to love the old Salisbury Waitrose: the wide aisles; old gentlemen in bright cords, jangling their loose change in their pockets as they aimlessly followed their wives around; the familiar cackle of ‘Can I Help?’ from the ‘baskets only’ line; the checkout bloke with the front tooth missing who chatted up anything in a skirt… And what have we got now? The giant bastard love-child of John Lewis and Waitrose skulking beside the ring-road like pimped-up aircraft hangar. With a wine bar. A bloody wine-bar! Can anyone tell me what a wine bar is doing in Waitrose? Sure, I’ve seen one or two of the old boys sat outside in the daytime with their disguised vodka in a coke bottle; but I’m guessing that the Waitroseum big-wigs didn’t have them in mind as the ideal clientele . So, given that the only way to reach the place is by car, who exactly are they catering for? “So let’s check: loo-rolls, cat-food, tampax, Weetabix, corn plasters… done. Time for that glass of Bordeaux and a garlic nibble in the wine-bar.’ In addition, as well as having placed the aisles – far narrower aisles than in the previous incarnation - in a seemingly totally random order; they’ve put another ‘delecatessen’ eatery slap bang in the middle of the chilled foods area. I don’t know about you, but eating Belgian pâté on french melba toast with wooly gloves on ain’t particularly easy. So, dear Waitrose, it has come to this. I have joined the riff-raff and am resorting to my local Teskies-Metro. OK, so they don’t stock many copies of The Guardian, and they may well assume that everyone drinks instant coffe…but at last I can walk from one side of the sodding store to the other without feeling that I should be donning hiking equipment. I’m afraid your new store has all the lasting appeal of a branch of Ikea. And at least Ikea’s got meatballs.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 18:00:49 +0000