M&S Christmas

Oreo

Am sure most posters will know this, but just in case….doing your Christmas order now will just keep the slot for you, it won’t guarantee that your chosen items will arrive.If they are out of stock on the day when they pack up your order ( this includes Ocado) then they will either substitute a different item or just apologise.
It’s best to not leave the slot until the 24th as if you do it a day earlier it leaves time to go out and try and source those items.

Yes my slot is early on the 23rd December, gives me or DH time to source any missing/substituted items.

You’re a wise old owl GrannyGravy13 😃🦉

I don't really buy anything very different. We eat alone, maybe have some turkey. What I enjoy about Christmas is the evening at my son and DiLs, with her dad and brothers family.

Daddima UPF = Ultra Processed Food.

All those additives and over processed ingredients that go into most processed foods. Look at the list of ingredients on a supermarket loaf. It ought to say just flour, yeast and salt. What it actually says is:
Wheat Flour [with Calcium, Niacin (B3), Iron, Folic Acid and Thiamin (B1)], Water, Yeast, Salt, Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed and Sustainable Palm), Soya Flour, Preservative: Calcium Propionate, Emulsifiers: E472e, E481, Flour Treatment Agent: Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)

Get to soft drinks and snacks and the ingredients list is almost unintelligible

I rarely buy Christmas food from M and S,or anywhere really, I don't host much myself but I do make things that the family like and take them ( often to my daughters)
I've never done an online shop though I do have a veg box delivered fortnightlywhich will be very useful for all the veg dishes we have at Christmas.
Having said that the M and S Christmas deserts look extremely delicious!

Waitrose slot booked for the family.

I won’t get a slot with Ocado till tomoro.
Will book it for the 23rd same as Oreo.

To bag a Waitrose slot, you need to have £40.00 on hand to save your place,you probably need a car and some basic IT skills.

Not everybody has these things. Never mind, I'll crawl back under my rock.

greyfur16

To bag a Waitrose slot, you need to have £40.00 on hand to save your place,you probably need a car and some basic IT skills.

Not everybody has these things. Never mind, I'll crawl back under my rock.

Don’t be upset about it. The original post was about high prices at M&S asking:

Anyone else given up on these expensive prices and moved to a cheaper local supermarket?

There’s no obligation to shop at M&S, in fact I can’t remember when I last went inside either of the two stores here to buy anything.

Many (most) do shop elsewhere. M&S has only 4% of the total grocery market share. It grows to between 6% and 7% in the Christmas period but it’s still a minnow. Tesco has a 28% share and Sainsbury 16% of the Christmas grocery market.

M&S doesn’t even fall under the definition of ‘grocers’ using the methodology on which the world grocery market share is based because it doesn’t carry a full range of grocery products.

We have an M&S fairly near, so traditionally we’ve gone at the crack of dawn on the 23rd, to be there when they open, to get a turkey and plenty of OJ.
I used to order but no more.

One year, when hosting relatives who didn’t like turkey, I ordered a joint of beef, supposed to be enough for 8, and maybe it was, if you only wanted small portions with hardly any left over .

I put it in the freezer and bought a bigger one elsewhere!

greyfur16

To bag a Waitrose slot, you need to have £40.00 on hand to save your place,you probably need a car and some basic IT skills.

Not everybody has these things. Never mind, I'll crawl back under my rock.

You do not pay anything until the day of delivery.

Why do you need a car for a food delivery?

If you can post on GN and/or used home deliveries during Covid you can secure a Christmas delivery slot.

Graphite I obviously buck the trend/statistics

I shop in M & S Food Hall every week, I also use Aldi, Sainsbury’s Local and one of two Farm Shops weekly.

I do a big shop online alternating between Waitrose and Sainsbury’s for things I cannot source from the others .

GrannyGravy13

greyfur16

To bag a Waitrose slot, you need to have £40.00 on hand to save your place,you probably need a car and some basic IT skills.

Not everybody has these things. Never mind, I'll crawl back under my rock.

You do not pay anything until the day of delivery.

Why do you need a car for a food delivery?

If you can post on GN and/or used home deliveries during Covid you can secure a Christmas delivery slot.

You need to have £40.00 pounds in a bank account to grab the slot.

My family eat up my M and S gluten free cheese crackers, they seem to like them better than their "normal "ones. But the gluten free fruit cake that has just come in is much more expensive than last year, I'm not sure if l will buy it.

I think I understand greyfur’s irritation.

The OP says M&S’s Christmas food is expensive and asks if anyone is shopping someone cheaper.

That was swiftly followed by umpteen people saying they are shopping at M&S or Waitrose, the two most expensive food shops outside of very high-end suppliers. So it could come across a little as bragging that they have the money to shop where others can’t afford to.

I’ve never been sucked into the market schtick that either of those stores is better than any other. And because M&S doesn’t stock a full range of groceries I doubt many people do their whole shop there.

And as for having to book an online slot for Christmas in September, that’s just madness. It suggests those stores don’t have the capacity to handle the kind of volume the big grocery stores do .. or they are just pushing the line that you still have to get to M&S early - as was the case before online shopping - or the shelves will be empty.

All of this adds to the anxiety that many people have over Christmas because it pushes another fantasy - that everyone else is going to be having a big party and feeding the five thousand when many people will spend Christmas alone and feel very self-conscious about it. We have already had one very recent thread about that and I have no doubt, with Christmas still three months away, there will be more.

I need to stop reading this thread 😳. I am not able to book a Waitrose slot until the 30th September!! I assume the lucky posters on here have a delivery pass?

I have booked my M and S collection for Christmas Eve. It is a large food hall with plenty of parking not in the centre of town so very convenient. We usually get a Turkey crown and the complete veg selection. However, we haven’t enjoyed the parsnips and roast potatoes the last two years so have just ordered the turkey and the red cabbage and may perhaps add the cauliflower cheese nearer the time to use on Boxing Day.

Cressy

I need to stop reading this thread 😳. I am not able to book a Waitrose slot until the 30th September!! I assume the lucky posters on here have a delivery pass?

I do not gave a delivery pass.

I got an email on Monday 21/09 to say I could book from 23:09

I think I understand greyfur’s irritation.
Oh yes, it's irritation alright. On every thread about luxury goods she takes aim at people's financial privilege and points out how not everyone can afford these.
Well, we know that, we're not ridiculing or being scornful of anyone.

Of course posters are going to mention M&S. It's the only grocery store mentioned both in the title and in the OP.

No bragging here.

I was a working mum, raising five children, at different schools. Added to which I had volunteering obligations.

It is just my modus operandi to be organised.

Fail to prepare- prepare to fail

Maybe a poster would like to let us know what we can post about…

I get staff discount at Waitrose and M&S but I do most of my Christmas shopping in Aldi. There are 7 of us so I find one of their turkey breast joints and a small ham is plenty, along with some pigs in blankets. I make my own cranberry sauce which is way better than shop bought. Aldi do some very nice Christmas puddings but I make my own cake and mince pies.

greyfur16

To bag a Waitrose slot, you need to have £40.00 on hand to save your place,you probably need a car and some basic IT skills.

Not everybody has these things. Never mind, I'll crawl back under my rock.

Whatever are you thinking?
£40 (or whatever the minimum order is ) for Christmas delivery , but its not taken until the order is fulfilled.
And why would you need a car for a delivery ? The clue is in the descriptor and as for basic IT skills, if you can post on GN you can book an internet shop.
I do one every week.
To book a Christmas slot, book an order for anything you like , 6 bottles of champagne for example but don’t forget to go into your order before the cut off date/time and amend it to what you actually really want
If you forget to do that, Christmas Dinner is likely to be light on the turkey and plum pudding, but at least you’ll have the champagne to console you! 🤣🤣🤣

I will do my Christnas shopping at Marks, Sainsburys, and Tesco. The last two I will buy my Christmas shopping with Nectar and Club card points. My cake will be black cake made by a Jamaican relative of my partners this us expensive and very alcoholic.

I have had Christmases in the past where we had to make do, the children enjoyed them though. Now I am not in the same position I will have what I want.

I think Greyfur you are wrong to bring comparisons into this. We have the Christmas we want and it is not about comparing.

This thread reminds me of when I was studying for a professional qualification. Sometimes, when I got something wrong, my tutor would write in the margin RTQ - Read The Question. The question here was:

“Anyone else given up on these expensive [M&S] prices and moved to a cheaper local supermarket?”

I really don’t care where people shop. It’s a free country and, as I said, statistics show that M&S has a very small share of the grocery market even at Christmas so clearly most people do already shop somewhere cheaper.

I defy anyone to tell the difference between an Aldi or an M&S Brussels sprout or, after their fifth glass of Prosecco, to say whether it came from Lidl or Waitrose. The farting during the King’s speech and the hangover next day will be of the same magnitude.