Grocery Guru Ep7: Who's the Pantomime Villain?

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the seventh episode of Grocery Guru: Who's the Pantomime Villain?

You Can Read the Full Pantomime Villain Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hi, Andrew, welcome to week six. How are you doing?

Andrew Grant:

Is it week six or week seven? I can't remember. But yes, I'm good.

Darren A. Smith:

Definitely one of them. This is week six, we think, with the Grocery Guru that is Andrew Grant. Now, he's looking like he's just stepped off an Eminem video.

Andrew Grant:

I'm not sure how many people can remember that far back, but yeah, it's quite cold here. I think we're moving into the proper weather for the proper season.

Darren A. Smith:

We are. We are. So this week, what are we talking about?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think, as I said, we're moving into Christmas season, despite the government possibly doing its best to stop us enjoying ourselves, whether that's right or wrong. I think it's pantomime season. I think it's time to start rolling out the, "He's over there", and, "Oh yes, he did."

Who's the Pantomime Villain?

 

Darren A. Smith:

"Oh no, he's not."

Andrew Grant:

"Oh no, he's not." Have a look at maybe some of the villains, pantomime villains for the season.

Darren A. Smith:

All right. And pantomime season's coming up. May happen, may not. But I get your point. Who's our villain that you want to talk about?

Andrew Grant:

Well, I just think because we're trying to keep these things topical, the British Brands Group, which encompasses some of the biggest UK brands, published a review this week of retailer compliance to GSCOP.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay. Okay. [crosstalk 00:01:24] For those that don't know is a piece of law governing UK supermarkets.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And every year legally, each of the 13 designated supermarkets has to write a report to the adjudicator. The government official that runs GSCOP telling her, now him, how they've done. British brands have collated all that. And yeah, here we are. Let's have a guess. So the, the country's largest retailer is...

Darren A. Smith:

Tesco.

Andrew Grant:

How many complaints of all the many thousands of suppliers they deal with and the billions that they spend with suppliers each year. How many complaints do you think they had last year? Sorry, alleged complaints.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay good. So these are breaches of GSCOP and by the way, you worded the question, I should say thousands, but I'm going to guess it's not.

Andrew Grant:

Okay. Well, they're alleged breaches, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

Alleged breaches. All right, so I'm going to go with 250.

Andrew Grant:

Okay. It was 45-

Andrew Grant:

...which the worst some headlines in the business, press trade press over the week saying, "Tesco are the villain. Tesco, the GSCOP villain." With 45 alleged breaches amongst I reckon that's less than 2.5% of their suppliers who have made an alleged breach. My view that's pretty good.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. But you and I have talked about this before and I've played along for the last couple of minutes, but here's where I don't play along. There are about 10,000 suppliers out there and 45 complaints are bugger all. And that is not a measure of how well they're doing. It's just not.

Andrew Grant:

Okay. Why don't we then divide the 45 complaints into how many billions of pounds the supermarket spend with suppliers. And it will come out... You'll run out of zeros after the point.

Darren A. Smith:

You will be. Here's a stat for you. So I got this one from LinkedIn in preparation for our week six, [crosstalk 00:03:31] and I should read it to you. "For every complaint, not GSCOP specific, but every complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers." Now I worked out that last year, last 12 months, there have been 154 breaches, alleged breaches of GSCOP. And if I times that by 26, I arrived at about 4,000.