Ordinary Gweilo

I had a look around the new CitySuper in Sha Tin.  The space they are occupying is the upper floor of what was once a department store (Yaohan?).  When that went bust, SHKP turned the lower level over to restaurants and the upper level to a weird assortment of outlets (a Wellcome supermarket, a couple of bookshops, and two different electrical stores, amongst other things).  Now, as part of a huge program of renovation (and corresponding increases in rental charges) they sent Wellcome packing and relocated everyone else.

I find City Super a bit of a puzzle.  They have gone to some trouble to source products from around the world, but apparently without really giving much thought to what they are selling.  There are well-known brands, but who would pay HK$80 for a Bernard Matthews turkey-based abomination (three times the price you’d pay back in the UK), or HK$50 for Country Life butter?  New Zealand butter is widely available for a fraction of that price, or CitySuper itself sells French butter for HK$20).

In addition, City Super seem to have a tie-up with Nisa, who supply corner shops in the UK, to provide bacon and other fresh food.  When I lived in the UK, the only reason I would buy from a corner shop would be as a last resort, so this is hardly an attractive proposition.  More sensibly, Park’n’Shop (and Great/Taste) have a deal with Waitrose to sell some of their own-brand products.  Now, when I lived in the UK I was willing to drive a few miles to Waitrose, even though their prices are higher, so paying a premium for their products in Hong Kong is not a problem.  Couldn’t City Super have cut a deal with Sainsbury or Tesco? 

As for fruit, there’s expensive Japanese stuff (presumably there must be customers for the HK$50 peach and the HK$100 bunch of grapes, but I’m not one of them). There’s other fruit and vegetable at higher prices than normal supermarkets – the quality does seem higher, but sometimes the price is so much higher that I couldn’t bring myself to pay it.

They have a good selection of fish and meat, but bizarrely much of it has been frozen and then defrosted.  I don’t understand the logic of this – if it’s frozen, why not sell it frozen?  Better still, sell it chilled rather than frozen, as Taste do with Australian pork.

All around the store there are puzzling examples such as this.  Or perhaps I am wrong, and there really are expats who are homesick for Country Life butter and Bernard Matthews turkey products.

Yes, there is a cheese counter.  The English cheese selection is small and almost entirely mass-produced rubbish, though they do have something that looks like Quickes cheddar.  However, there is a goodish selection of soft cheeses from France, so it’s not all bad.

Of course the ambience and level of service is much better than the Wellcome/PnS duopoly provide, and that alone justifies higher prices, but I think a bit more effort in sourcing the right products would also pay dividends.

Best free entertainment: watching people walking around and picking up items, then saying "Gauchoi" (something like "surely that can’t be right") when they see the price.