Saturday 17 November 2012

Bags & Beaujolais

On Thursday we went and did our weekly shop. We mostly shop at SuperU although an equal distance away there's a LeClerc and an Intermarché store. From time to time we also shop at these stores, but mostly the default choice is SuperU. On Thursdays those with loyalty cards for said supermarket get double points and as a Thursday often works for us this is a bonus. We aren't really into loyalty cards, but we do have one for this supermarket.
Free little and large shopping bags
Sometimes there's even a thank-you gift for loyal customers. Not too long ago we got a nest of very practical plastic storage boxes with vented lids so they can go straight from the freezer or fridge into the microwave -- handy!  This week we were rewarded with a, quite tasteful, bag for life -- again something useful. When we got home we found that there was a second 'baby' bag inside. To be honest, as we shop for two, these recent gifts have turned out to be more useful to us than many of the super-sized, buy-one-get-one-free offers so often seen in supermarkets in the Netherlands or UK.
a nice bottle of Beaujolais-Villages
Thursday was also Beaujolais Nouveau day. It's always the third Thursday in November. The quality can be pretty variable from year to year and often we don't bother. This year we thought 'why not?' and decided to give a bottle a try. Perhaps we were lucky, but our choice turned out to be very nice indeed! A votre santé!

15 comments:

Diane said...

We have a loyalty card for LeClerc and have yet to see anything back from them despite the amount we seem to spend there!
That Beaujolais looks good. Cheers Diane

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Diane - the choice of items you can trade your points in for is quite nice and you have to do your shopping somewhere [You can also opt for cash off a shop].

the fly in the web said...

We had a Super U card which seemed to be valid for only one shop...it was closed for renovation, a new franchise took over and repudiated the cards!

Leclerc's card on the other hand worked everywhere..

Niall & Antoinette said...

@fly - our SuperU card seems to work like your LeClerc card. The only thing is if you don't shop at SuperU for 4 weeks you lose all your accumulated points.

Susan said...

SuperU is my supermarket of choice too -- it may not be as attractively packaged as Intermarché and Leclerc, but it is consistently cheaper and the quality is as good. I generally opt for the cashback.

Vagabonde said...

Here we have Kroger and Publix as regular supermarkets, then we have Trader Joe’s and Whole Food Market which is more the organic style. None of them give gifts though. When we were in Nice last month we went to the Monoprix supermarket and remarked that there is such a larger variety of goods in France than in the US – above all, cheese, entremets, wines and chocolate, well cookies too. I wish we had such stores here in the US. But we went into a supermarket in Italy and a couple of years ago one in Lisbon, Portugal, and it was the same – a greater variety of choice than in the US. In addition we don’t have the little markets here like in Europe – we do have vegetable markets in the summer, but not the type of markets which comes in French towns, once or twice a week with food, fish, meat and everything else. I miss that.

GaynorB said...

SuperU would also be my choice of supermarket. I keep handing over my card but have never redeemed anything, and if the month limit you talk about is in force it looks like it will be a very long time before I will. At the moment it will be impossible for us to use the shop at least once a month.

Another example of faining to read the small print...

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Susan - we mostly opt for the cashback too.

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Vagabonde - the small markets are one of the real joys of living in France and when we can we use them. Although to be fair we use the supermarket a lot of the time.

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Gaynor - we only found out the hard way. Had loads of points and then due to visitng Endinburgh and using LeClerc we 'went over' the 4 weeks and 'zap' found all points were gone!

Jean said...

We have a SuperU card and managed to get more than 30 euros off our shopping in October by redeeming the points. I don't know how we managed that if the four-week rule applies.

I haven't had that many hangovers in my life but the worst one was after a Beaujolais Nouveau evening at a local restaurant. After the first few sips it tasted half decent so we carried on drinking and regretted it !!

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Jean - Well that's a puzzle! We did get told that it used to be 3 months and they've now changed it to 1 month so perhaps that's why?

We too have had some nasty experiences with Beaujolais!! Hence our caution :-)

Perpetua said...

Bother! I forgot to redeem my SuperU points at the end of the summer, so will have to start again from scratch next year. But I did get a second insulated bag for frozen foods for spending over 50 euros on the first Thursday we were there, so I don't feel too bad.:-)

Hope the Beaujolais lived up to expectations.

Niall & Antoinette said...

@Perpetua - Thankfully the Beaujolais was very nice!
It is the first time for a number of years that bothered to buy a bottle of nouveau.

LindyLouMac said...

I know what you mean about loyalty cards!