She doesn’t sell the bread by itself… So she doesn’t qualify as “competition” 
Sorry I missed you. I must have been home enjoying some of the beer I brought back from the States!
Saturday, July 26th… early evening until you can’t drink anymore beer. I’m taking a huge beer shipment (14 cases) this evening 
Tesco in the news again today. It’s a pity the folks at the China Post don’t know how to spell Sanmin and Minsheng.
TaiwanHo has a product survey form posted.
taiwanho.com/modules.php?op= … load&sid=1
Tesco’s management wants your suggestions.
The form contains a listing of 369 of their name-brand products, which are indicated as inactive/active.
Just got back from Tesco (one of the articles in the local rags said that it was opening today) and it was shut. It opens this Saturday. It is on the east side of San Min just north of Min Sheng. It is open from 8am-11pm, which is nice.
[quote=“Mark0938”]
Just got back from Tesco … It opens this Saturday. [/quote]
Me too! I spoke to a couple of people hanging around outside (security guard and other Tesco personnel) who said that it would be opening on Saturday, “MAYBE”. On previous occasions, I was told mid-June, then 7th of July, then 23rd of July, and now the 26th… So, any day soon, and MAYBE Saturday… 
THe countdown is on! Perhaps we should have a countdown clock on Forumosa, like the ones they had for 2000. 
If there was one thing i would wish for it would be KP Salted Peanuts (why is it that you can get all sorts of peanuts here but not the ‘normal’ salted variety?) or maybe a good pork pie!
Tesco “Loyalty Cards”…tagged razors…I just can’t wait. 
The card up their sleeve
That loyalty, on the face of it, is based on how much you spend with one particular retailer. Sure, the rewards aren’t huge but, as Tesco likes to put it, “Every little helps.” Besides which, we in the UK love bargains, and getting something for nothing even more. But the question is: how much does the nothing really cost? It is not simply a matter of choosing to be “loyal”, now synonymous with “open your wallet”, to one supermarket over another - the cost is in having your purchases scrutinised and analysed in staggering detail by the loyalty card retailers. You’d be amazed what they can do with a seemingly innocuous flow of till receipts, coupled with your loyalty card. Worse, having accepted the principles of these schemes so gamely, we have paved the way for the kind of surveillance technology that will turn your stomach once you realise that it is happening in real time and not in some implausible, futuristic film. Right now, we are the unsuspecting guinea pigs for comprehensive trials of new customer-tracking, shop spy technology.
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Alan Robinson, manager at the Tesco store on Newmarket Street, Cambridge, seems excited about this store’s current trials of RFID tags in Gillette Mach3 razorblades. Speaking to Smart Labels Analyst magazine in April this year, he said: “We are cooperating with this trial in every way we can - we would like to be a test bed for many more trials of this kind.” He adds: “We haven’t had a single customer ask what the tag is doing in their packet of razors!” Notoriously subject to theft (small, expensive and easily resold), these blades were tagged by Gillette, which earlier this year ordered 500m radio-frequency ID tags from the aptly named Alien Technology Corp. At the Tesco Cambridge store, reports the magazine, a camera trained on the Gillette blade shelf, and triggered by the tags, captures a photo of each customer who removes a Mach3 pack. Another photo is taken at the checkout and security staff compare the two images to ensure they always have a pair.
It’s getting to the point where I’ll only believe it when I see it. Maybe they’ll open in time to start selling Christmas puddings and brandy sauce 
!
All this uncertainty about the opening date is detracting a lot from the pleasure of anticipation. I’m so excited at the prospect of being able to go and shop at Tesco’s without having to trek all the way to Taoyuan, but I want a definite date to fix my sights on, and I can’t understand why they’re not providing that. They ought to be making a big thing of the opening and counting down toward the great day, instead of sowing such doubt and confusion about when it’ll actually happen.
Their construction is quite a bit behind schedule. When I went by there Monday there was still lots and lots of work that needed to be done. Even Saturday may be an over-optimistic date.
I think I will wait a while to go shopping there so they can work out all of the inevitable kinks and staff problems that will crop up in opening a new store.
I wonder if anyone went there this weekend? I wonder if it is even open yet! Sogo MRT station has big Tesco posters, so it must be imminent…
It’s open. Pretty much as expected…loads of chaff, pockets of wheat. Good selection of the ‘Tesco Selected’ wines at a very good price. Some of their home-brand stuff is great (washing powders, toothpaste, curry sauces, pasta sauces, tinned veggies, etc) and extremely cheap; i think it was NT$19 a can for their baked beans. Their fresh selection was too crowded for a good look but it looked very good value. I bought a massive avocado for NT$35
“This is a local shop - for local people ! There’s nothing for you here !”
I was at Tesco last night.
I found some Lincolnshires and Cumberlands, bought three packs of each actually. Also found Mango Chutney and some other odds and ends.
Watching the locals as I shopped I couldn’t help but think that the few British-made products on the shelves will soon disappear.
The Taiwanese were not there to purchase Western goods; they were there for the discounts on local goods. They looked at the Western goods, picked them up, read the labels, but put then back on the shelves. One young woman, I saw, remonstrated with her mom about buying some Ceasar Salad Dressing. Mom, out for bargains on chicken feet, point blankly refused. Another couple stared at me as I gleefully stashed two jars of Mango Chutney in my trolley. Still others pointed at the cheeses. And it is not as if these goods are expensive. On the contrary, most foreign goods are under NT$100.
Still, not one purchase of a Western good did I see.
Will we be forever consigned to making arduous trips to Tienmu to buy goodies? Sadly yes, as Tescos, quite rightly, is here to make money. Wasting valuable shelf space on so few of us is not good economy.
Typical…100 feet of shelving for instant noodles and 1 foot for mustard. 
Typical…100 feet of shelving for instant noodles and 1 foot for mustard. [/quote]
BF, my point is this: What is going to distinguish Tescos from other European supermarket chains?
Nothing! Because in the end Tescos is going to be just as bland as Geant and Carrefour. Loads and loads of noodles.
I forgot about Breeze when writing my previous post. :shock: :shock:
Pricey as it is, it’s still the best supermarket in Taiwan.
Although having a few foreigners wandering around does provide an excellent sideshow for the locals piling their carts high with such British delicacies as sheep’s lung and chickens’ feet.
Taisco’s has cleverly lopped the ends off the sausages so that the minute they go in the frying pan the meat will splurge out. I notice the Chinese sausages have the ends twirled closed.
However, like Tesco’s in England, some of the products have no price on them. That, at least, made me feel more at home.
[quote=“Alleycat”]
BF, my point is this: What is going to distinguish Tescos from other European supermarket chains?
Nothing! Because in the end Tescos is going to be just as bland as Geant and Carrefour. Loads and loads of noodles.[/quote]
Exactly. I remember when Carrefour first opened…it was great. Now? I might as well go to Welcome. I lost all hope along time ago. Anyway, I buy most of my Western necessities at Wellman’s on Chung Shan N. Rd, Sec 6. For my Asian spices etc, I go to the Indonesian shops in and around the Taipei Train Station.
[quote=“blueface666”][quote=“Alleycat”]
BF, my point is this: What is going to distinguish Tescos from other European supermarket chains?
Nothing! Because in the end Tescos is going to be just as bland as Geant and Carrefour. Loads and loads of noodles.[/quote]
Exactly. I remember when Carrefour first opened…it was great. Now? I might as well go to Welcome. I lost all hope along time ago. Anyway, I buy most of my Western necessities at Wellman’s on Chung Shan (Zhongshan) N. Rd, Sec 6. For my Asian spices etc, I go to the Indonesian shops in and around the Taipei Train Station.[/quote]
I thought Tesco’s was indistinguishable from Wellcome. Except that to get to Wellcome I don’t have to travel to the end of Min Sheng.