Aldi mum or Ocado smuggie: which supermaket tribe are you?

To the delight of social commentators, Caroline Flint has hit on the successor to Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman: if Labour is to win the next election, says the Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, it must court what she calls ‘Aldi Mum’. In the consumer age, by the supermarket shall ye know the voter. In London, Aldi Mum is already a well-known character. But she is only one among a whole tribe of supermarket stereotypes. To wit:

ALDI MUM

Caroline Flint, God bless her, did seem a little bit confused about what Aldi actually is. ‘Aldi Mum is an unashamed bargain hunter,’ she said, ‘who stocks up on the basics at the supermarket but opts for Aldi for the Parma ham and prosecco.’ Aldi, most readers won’t need telling, is a supermarket.

Still, I see what she’s getting at (let’s leave aside that this struggling demographic, in her mind, is one that has sacked its gardener). Once, Aldi Mum did all her shopping in the same supermarket. Now she goes to two.

That suggests there may in fact be two sorts of Aldi Mum. There’s the one described by Flint who uses an expensive supermarket to stock up on basics and then gets the posh treats from Aldi — for example, baked beans from Fortnums and foie gras from Poundland.

More plausible is the Aldi mum who used to shop in a more expensive supermarket for basics, but now buys her basics from Aldi and her luxuries from M&S. At her dinner parties, for instance, the smoked salmon is M&S but the cream cheese on the blinis is from Aldi. The wine is M&S but the tinned tomatoes in the sauce are from Aldi. And the veg all comes from Morrisons, because everyone knows Morrisons is great for veg.

SAINSBURY'S LOCALIST

The Central London-dwelling Sainsbury’s Localist is both blessed and cursed. Blessed, because he lives round the corner from a Sainsbury’s Local; cursed, because he lives round the corner from a Sainsbury’s Local. This means that he hasn’t done a big, economies-of-scale weekly shop in the past year and a half. Instead, he is to be found ‘just popping out’ three or four times a day. He never plans supper until ten minutes before he starts cooking it, and his store cupboard contains almost nothing at all.

As a consequence, he eats an awful lot of ready meals — which is no biggie; he’s single in any case — and is tempted more often than he would like by a just-before-closing trip to get a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. When he has friends round or — better yet — an overnight guest, he knows that he’s always able to run out for a bottle of vodka, a pouch of baccy or a giant pillow-pack of those cheap but insanely moreish own-brand crispy onion rings. He is on first-name terms with the staff. In fact, last Monday he could have sworn that the self-checkout machine said, ‘Hello,’ in a more than usually familiar way.

SUPERMARKET REFUSNIK

These characters are what anticapitalist protest circles call ‘the one per cent’. Fortnums they know. Marks & Spencer they’ve heard of. They think Aldi is an avant-garde composer. Both cash- and time-rich, they sally forth from their detached houses in Bishops Avenue or Oxford Gardens to load up the Porsche Cayenne (often double-parked; tickets are the price of convenience) at a number of different, authentic outlets.

They get their mozzarella di bufala from the cheese counter at Whole Foods — where they were more pleased than they’d admit to find themselves queuing behind Howard from Take That — but they think the fior di latte is better at Selfridges (they needed to pop in for a side of salmon in any case).

Meat comes from the organic butcher (Moen & Sons on Clapham Common is the only place for game), exotic veg and grains come from Whole Foods (again), and their idea of a ready meal is a pie from Lidgate’s. If you describe Whole Foods as a ‘supermarket’ they are apt to hum and haw as if giving the thought fair consideration before explaining that it’s ‘not quite like that, actually — it’s more of a market market’. If you describe Whole Foods as ‘a supermarket for people with more money than sense’, expect to miss out on the venison-and-dark-chocolate stew at their next dinner party.

TESCO METRO TEENAGER

A species of semi-benign herd animal, the Tesco Metro Teenager haunts the doorways of any small supermarket specialising in extra-large Rizlas, alcopops and chocolate bars. Creatures of habit, they debouch from the bus exactly 15 minutes after school lets out — Puffa jackets over their uniforms; ties half off — and mill around getting in other shoppers’ way and causing the automatic doors to open and close inanely.