Chris Hyde: A simple way supermarkets can get back into our good books

Dear supermarket owners, if you take your multi-deals off perishable foods, customers will be much happier. Photo / Warren Buckland

OPINION

Dear supermarket owner.

Your aisles are filled with public relations headaches at the moment. But it's not just your eye-watering food prices that are irking your customers, it the way you're pricing them.

Read on, though, because there's at least one simple thing you could try that would make shoppers smile again.

In this era of record-high inflation, there are few things more depressing than going to the supermarket. Butter is through the roof, cheese too.

The wheat and grain that is getting stuck in Ukraine is even pushing our daily cereal up near $10 a box some weeks.

Often, fruit and veges are so expensive that every grape pip tastes more and more like budget regret.

Supermarket owner, you need to find a way to make us like you again.

It could be by doing one small thing no Commerce Commission report or politician has dared to force you to do.

You see, while they were going after your restrictive land covenants, and muscling that you've been giving your suppliers, they missed something.

You see those special signs, the ones beside the fast-perishing food?

That one there by the broccoli says two for $3. In the meat aisle you've got a three for $20 deal on low cut. I just remembered I need some yoghurt pottles - wouldn't you know it, they're two for $8 today?

My friend the supermarket owner, these so-called multi deals are on so many perishable foods now that it's stopped being funny.

I'm never going to need more than one broccoli, yet so often deals encourage me to buy two. Photo / Unsplash

I will not ever need two cauliflowers in one go.

I will not ever need five avocados for $6 on my toast.

Two lettuces for $7? Who eats two lettuces? Do you think I am a guinea pig?

In an era where we care about food waste, about climate change and the environmental impact of our food, this is important.

Sure, they're there to shift the product before it spoils, you say. You'll try to claim they're actually a good thing?

I'm not buying that, sorry.

If you're as clever as your loyalty schemes, you know could probably scale your fresh product prices so they gradually decrease each hour or two, the closer the fresh food gets to spoiling.

Eventually, it really would be 'reduced to clear'. People might actually buy it. And the people that do buy it, might not just toss a bunch of spoiled food from their fridge at the end of the week.

And in an era of belt-tightening, the last thing we want is to be told we have to buy more stuff we don't need so that we can 'save'.

I'll leave you with another piece of advice before I finish. Actually, I won't. You're not getting any two-for-one deals from me.