Asda to make cheapest food ranges more widely available
The supermarket chain Asda has committed to making its cheapest food ranges more widely available, after the anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe raised concerns that low-income shoppers were facing price hikes because they could no longer get hold of them.
The retailer said it had taken on board Monroe’s comments and would stock its full Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in all 581 food stores and online, increasing the number of customers who have access to the products.
Some of the deals, which include 1kg bags of rice for 45p and tins of chopped tomatoes for 28p, had been taken off the website and removed from some stores as the supermarket streamlined its offer.
But last month Monroe pointed out that some shoppers were effectively facing treble-digit inflation because they were no longer able to buy products from these ranges and had to buy more expensive basics.
In one example she gave of an unnamed retailer, the cheapest 1kg bags of rice had been removed from the shelves, and the next alternative was a 500g costing £1, which worked out as a 344% increase.
She added that in her local Asda, the cheapest bag of pasta was no longer a 29p bag from the Smart Price range but an own-brand version costing 70p – a 141% price rise.
Asda said 150 value-range products were stocked in 300 stores currently, but by 1 March it would introduce all 200 of them across its outlets.
This week it increased the number available online by 100 to 187, and will add more by the end of the month.
Meg Farren, Asda’s chief customer officer, said: “We want to help our customers’ budgets stretch further and have taken on board the comments about the availability of our Smart Price range made by Jack Monroe.
“We are taking steps to put our full Smart Price
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