Tesco Meal Deal Price Rise

 

Tesco has raised the price of its meal deal as food costs soar. The sandwich, snack and drink deal will increase to £3.40 for Tesco Clubcard members after more than 10 years being priced at £3. It will go from £3.50 to £3.90 for those without a loyalty card. Food prices are rising at their fastest rate in 42 years, squeezing household budgets and driving grocery inflation to 14.6% in the 12 months to September. Tesco said its meal deal still represented "great value". The supermarket said more than 70% of its customers currently use a Clubcard, which is a free card that gives customers discounts. Companies are facing increased costs for things like fuel, wages and ingredients, and many firms are now passing those on to customers by raising prices. A BBC survey has uncovered growing concern about the squeeze on finances. Some 85% of those asked are now worried about the rising cost of living, up from 69% in a similar poll in January. As a result, nine in 10 people are trying to save money by delaying putting the heating on and three in five people in the UK will cut back this Christmas.

Meal Deal

Coco Chocolatier Takes On Tony

Premium chocolate maker Coco Chocolatier is hoping to challenge Tony’s Chocolonely with two new retail brands. The supplier has debuted Up Up, a “slave-free” tablet brand that uses single-estate cocoa from a plantation in north Colombia, which is then turned into chocolate in Bogotá. The business teamed up with Swiss NGO Slavefreetrade to ensure every step of its production is traceable. It also hoping to challenge free-from chocolate brands such as Hip with Otherly, a new vegan chocolate brand made using oat milk. Both brands have debuted with a quartet of 130g bars. Up Up has rolled out Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Sea Salt & Lime, and Salted Caramel flavours (rsp: £3.50/130g).

Up Up Chocolate

ASOS Shoppers Cut Back

Online fashion retailer Asos has reported a big loss as its customers spend less on fashion due to the rising cost of living. The firm saw a loss of nearly £32m in the 12 months to August, compared with a profit of £177m last year. The firm expects shoppers to cut back further this year as living costs soar. Inflation returned to a 40-year high in September as BBC research showed people are feeling increasingly anxious about their finances. Asos, which owns Topshop and Topman, said it was facing "an incredibly challenging economic environment" at the moment. Asos and its rival Boohoo, which were seen as a poster children for the shift to online shopping, benefited during the pandemic as locked-down shoppers splashed out online. But they have struggled as people have returned to stores. Asos said in June that cash-strapped consumers were also returning more items bought online, hitting its profits. The fashion retailer said it now planned to rebuild its once-successful business model, sorting out problems with its supply chain and refreshing its fashion ranges.

ASOS

Heinz Apology

Heinz, the UK’s favourite baked beans brand, has taken out a page of The Guardian to issue an apology for taking 150 years to launch a new range of pasta sauces. The apology to the British public and Heinz’ founder Henry Heinz for not creating the pasta sauce despite its focus on tomato products. However, the brand explained it would probably be “the best pasta sauce you’ve ever tasted”, assuring it was worth the wait “because nothing so ridiculously good, has come so ridiculously late”.The move to a pasta sauce range has been deemed an important step in strategy to expand into new categories. “Despite our extensive agriculture heritage and tomato expertise, this is the first Heinz pasta sauce launched in the UK —a market where Heinz is annually ranked amongst the most loved food brands,” Kraft-Heinz new ventures director Caio Fontenele said. “We thought it was the right time to launch Heinz Pasta Sauces, with cooking and pasta sauces receiving a boost in sales in 2020 thanks to consumers experimenting more with meals at home. The category is estimated to see 19.2% rise in value sales growing to £962 million.”

Heinz Pasta Sauce

Nike Forward

For 50 years, Nike has created shoes and fitness apparel that make you feel better: fitter, faster, stronger. With their latest innovation, the company hopes to better the world. Today, you can buy the first pieces made from the brand’s new material called Forward. Unlike traditional fabrics—which come to life via a multistage process that involves spinning yarn, knitting, cutting, sewing, and more—Forward is made using needle-punch machines. Nike adapted this tech from the automotive and medical industries over five years, using it to turn multiple thin layers of fiber into textile. Reducing the manufacturing steps cuts down on energy usage, resulting in a carbon footprint that’s 75 percent smaller than that of a traditional Nike knit fleece. The first Nike Forward silhouettes are a classic grey hoodie and crew neck. Both highlight Nike’s commitment to sustainability: They’re made without dyes, which generates zero water waste; free of embellishments like zippers, aglets (those metal and plastic tubes on the end of shoelaces), or extra trims that make apparel harder to recycle. 

Nike Forward

Netflix Ad-Supported Version

Netflix is launching a new streaming option with adverts in November, introducing a less expensive offering as it fights to keep viewers. The plan will be available in 12 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Mexico and Australia. The firm said it would charge £4.99 a month for the service in the UK, while it will cost $6.99 in the US. Netflix has been losing customers as competition and cost of living pressures mount. The company lost more than 1 million subscribers in the first half of this year. It is due to provide an update of that figure to investors next week. Netflix's move into advertising is a big change for the company, which pioneered the idea of subscription-based streaming. Subscribers to the new offering should expect to see an average of four to five minutes of adverts per hour, the company said. Disney, for example, is due to roll out an advert supported service in December in the US. That plan will start at $7.99 a month. Netflix is asking people who sign up for the ad service for gender and birth date information as part of efforts to target ads.

Netflix Advert

Sausage Roll Price Hike

 

British baker and fast-food chain Greggs this week introduced a further round of price rises, including for the sausage rolls it is famous for, as it battles rising costs, its boss said on Tuesday. "We have put a small number of rises across products as of yesterday, we've worked hard to mitigate that," Chief Executive Roisin Currie told Reuters. She said a Greggs sausage roll was 1.05 pound ($1.20) at the start of the year, moved to 1.10 pound in May and is now 1.15 pound. The bakery chain wrote in a tweet: “Like many other retailers, we’re having to manage the pressure of rising prices across our supply chain. We’ve had to make some small price increases across our range.” Rising costs of raw materials, production, labour and energy have all impacted the chain, forcing it hike the prices of its food to absorb some of the costs. However, the chain said its low-cost meals were appealing to people who are struggling amid the current cost of living pressures.

Greggs Sausage Roll

Vodafone & Three Merger

Vodafone is in talks with Three about merging their UK businesses. It would mean the third and fourth largest mobile phone networks respectively combining to create a business with 27 million customers, larger than current leaders BT, EE and Virgin Media O2. The companies say it would accelerate the rollout of 5G and rural broadband. Any deal would be scrutinised by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Reports suggest the two companies are hopeful of striking a deal by the end of the year. Regulators have previously opposed mergers that would reduce the number of networks in the UK. However, Vodafone has pointed to a recent report from communications regulator Ofcom which might suggest a new approach. It found that both Vodafone and Three had in recent years delivered returns on investments that were lower than the cost of the capital they used. Vodafone pairing with Three is just one potential tie-up in the UK. Other deals involving Virgin Media O2, TalkTalk and Sky have been speculated in recent months.

Phone Merger

Quality Street Axes Plastic

 

Quality Street’s multicoloured confectionery will now all be a bit more green – or that is the hope – as the foil and plastic wrappers are swapped for recyclable paper. The change marks the first switch away from rustling, shiny plastic wrappers for the brand in 86 years since Harold Mackintosh launched the brand in 1936 – with the intention of keeping 2bn wrappers a year out of landfill. Nine of the 11 Quality Street sweets will move to paper-based packaging, which most local authorities collect. The orange crunch and green triangle will remain in foil wrappers as, traditionally, they have not had a plastic layer. The new paper wrappers are covered with a specially created vegetable-based coating designed to keep the sweets fresh without hindering the recycling process. The change will take several months to complete, so this Christmas fans will find a mix of old and new wrappers in their Quality Street tubs and tins. Nestlé, the owner of the popular Christmas treats, said it was also switching KitKat wrappers to 80% recycled plastic that could be recycled at supermarkets across the UK or put in household recycling in Ireland.

Quality Street