Age of Abstinence: Tesco makes bottles smaller to charge more for your wine
It’s not exactly a surprise that food portions are getting smaller. Public Health England is insisting that we should all be eating less, drinking less. We should all be having less fat, less sugar, less alcohol. So, what is a supermarket or food producer to do? Some things just cannot be made with less salt – it’s essential to make bread rise for example. And there’s really not that much point in an energy drink like Lucozade if it doesn’t contain any sugar. Nor, obviously, booze if it doesn’t contain any booze.
So, what to do? Why, just make the package size smaller of course! Which is exactly what Tesco is doing with it’s own brand wines:
One of Britain’s biggest supermarkets has announced shock plans to make wine bottles smaller.
A new 50cl bottle contains the equivalent of four or five glasses of wine while a 37.5cl one – half the size of a standard sized bottle – holds three or four.
It means shoppers will be able to crack open their favourite tipple without being tempted to drink a full sized bottle.
Well, OK, those for whom own brand Tesco wine is a favourite tipple – rather than an any port in a storm sup – have their own problems. And the idea that a half bottle holds four glasses is true only of those who serve in sherry glasses. Actually, I’ve found that full bottles of sherry can hold only six glasses but there may be an influence of journalists and booze occurring there.
It is however The Sun which manages to get things entirely wrong here. For it’s not just smaller portions leading to less consumption going on. There’s also the manner in which things become more expensive:
The 50cl bottles are cheaper – the Rioja Reserva is £6.25 and 75cl is £8.50. But it remains to be seen whether shoppers will be tempted by the slimmer containers.
Well, no, the smaller bottles are more expensive. The full bottle size is 1.5 times the 50 cl one. 1.5 times £6.25, some quick mental maths, umm, £9.3750 for the same amount of booze we can get in the 75 cl bottle for £8.50. That’s more expensive, right? 87.5 pence more expensive in fact, and to pull out the calculator, that’s 10.3% more expensive.
Which is why we’re not hearing all that many complaints from the supermarkets about the insistences of PHE. For PHE have indeed said that their demands that we all have access to less sugar, less fat, less booze, can be met by portions becoming smaller. Without the correct reductions in price to take account of how we’re getting less. The supermarkets love this, they get to sell us less food at not a correctly less price, that means profit! And everyone else has to do the same because it’s the public health wallahs insisting upon it.
The worst part about this rip off is that we’re paying for it through our taxes. Yup, you pay taxes, I do, to pay for Public Health England, who then demand that the supermarkets make our booze and sweeties more expensive. Be easier and simpler, surely, to bypass the bureaucracy and w all just eat and drink what we want, no?
Posted: 1st, May 2018 | In: News, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
