Hi everyone in today's lesson we're going to do a lesson on shopping in England
If you ever come to England on a holiday or you're coming to stay for a while
It will also be a general culture talk an informal talk where I'll
Talk to you about the shops. I know that are regular from around England and the kind of things that you can buy there
supermarkets that most people you will meet buy most of their food groceries from the
Supermarkets in London, they are generally
They're generally a bit smaller if they're in the city
Or they might be in a retail park
Which is where you you generally get a few supermarkets together and a big car park
but because it takes up a lot of
Land and a lot of space you never get the really big supermarkets like that right in the centre
where the property is really expensive you need to go a little bit further out or
a
Town most towns will have their own retail park where you get all of these
Supermarkets in the city, what's much more likely as you get a small?
These supermarkets. They don't all have them you won't have such a
Big selection inside that supermarket, but it's more convenient and people can walk there
They don't have to drive if there's no car park on these ones and you can just buy enough food
Groceries just for that day or the net the next day and the next breakfast but most of the time those small
Supermarkets people don't buy absolutely everything for days
So here are the main ones if you've been to England, I'm sure you've already heard of these names
Now I'll talk you through the different
supermarkets if something comes to mind that they're known for I'll I'll let you know if
There's nothing that's special about them. I'll just skip it so
English supermarket, I would say and
so perhaps in your country, you've seen a Tesco and
According to my mum who knows more about supermarkets than I do. She says that Tesco is not that good anymore
They it's like they stopped making that much effort in England and went into other countries or something like that. So
depending on who you ask Tesco is not that good anymore and
Their slogan is every little helps
So they're like really helping you when you go and so up there
Have a slogan called taste the difference
That they're a little bit higher than Tesco. So if you go to Sainsbury's it's like
everything is a little bit more tasty here over then at Tescos and it's a little bit more expensive and they have
Products or more unusual products that are slightly more expensive or more organic products and things like that
supermarket and they're known for being
quite cheap or you could say good value and
As the price ching-ching then that's what they do
Cheap in my opinion not necessarily always tasty, but that's just what I think
Morrison's I tend to think of it as a bit of a northerners supermarket. I'm a southerner
I'm from London, and we do have Morrison's here but their products
Culturally, there are differences between the north of England and the south of England and that includes food often and what people eat
So I find in Morrison's they have more
Products that you haven't seen in a while and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that
There are some things that you'll find in Morrison's that the other main ones don't do
Maybe it's because they're more for northerners. I don't know. That's just what I think about them
it's not like they advertise themselves as for that little
Little and little and aldia kind of similar they've been in England for about the same amount of time and
supermarkets, so I'm not sure if the two of them come from Germany or if it's just Aldi, but they
Those if you go in those supermarkets, they look different to these English ones
peep they tend to be really busy, especially at a weekend and
People don't go there for small shopping. Usually they buy a lot of stuff so they fill up their
They have the main things that you buy all the time the
canned goods and things like that, but they also have something that I've not really understood properly a
Things change so they might have I guess it's seasoned all things in there. They might have camping
Chairs or tents or barbecues sometimes and other times of the year, they sell snow boots
Things are always changing there and you might be surprised by a by a bargain if you look
Yeah, and what's different about these ones which you have to know if you're not used to going there when you buy your shopping and
The checkout where you are they go beep and you're supposed to get your things and chuck them really fast
into your trolley because other people are waiting you just really as fast as you can and you go and
If you try and pack and organize it there at the checkout
Then the cashier might look at you in an angry way or tell you that you're not allowed to do that
maybe that's why they're a bit cheaper because the staff costs lower and
It's not really about customer service. It's about getting a
You're not spending too much money on your food and
Being efficient, you know being a bit German about it. Next is wait trays
Wait Rose is known as the posh posh food supermarket
It's probably the most expensive one
Similar to Sainsbury's maybe a bit more expensive they have lots of organic food and
Food that comes from special farms and lots of food
Never eat because it's new or it's fashionable or they haven't really heard of it or they're not used to it
so Waitrose a lot of the time you get you get in very rich areas or
areas, where people would really desire to live
Then we have Marks and Spencer Marks & Spencer
Food, I would say although they also sell cloves
But I think most of the money they make most of their business comes from their food
Food stores that's in there and Marks and Spencers does
same like all the other ones does ready meals and
Will sell vegetables and things like that, but what Marks and Spencers does in
terms of convenience food in terms of ready meals is that
The way they package it and the way they their whole brand is
they make make it seem delicious the ready meals and
Something that you could enjoy or something that you could spoil yourself with
whereas a ready meal from Asda
It wouldn't it would never be considered a delicious thing. It would be considered maybe
Just something you're eating quickly if you don't care
Whether it's really is true and it's more delicious. I'm not sure whether it's the branding
You feel like you enjoy it. Basically, I don't I don't know why it's true. But I like Marks and Spencers and
Most of everything they sell in there
Has their name on it. So the biscuits that you buy will be
the other biscuit factory makes them and
They just put the Marks and Spencers label on it
The way they sell everything with their name
They do it in a way that it's high and it's and it's good
whereas a lot of these other supermarkets when they do things in their own name, they're seen as
Maybe not so delicious. So yeah, I keep saying it must be about the branding or maybe they are better. I don't really know
This is like a word association
Or vocabulary that we'd use in these supermarkets
it's a new word a new word people invented from
From the special offer that you'll find in a supermarket called buy one get one free
So that's when you go in there and you were only going to buy one washing up liquid
but you see that it's a bug off if you buy it, you'll get two and
this word came because there was a
Time where the supermarkets were doing these promotions so much and
People were thinking I'm getting such a good deal here. They were always buying too and they it
What the supermarkets were doing was?
slightly increasing the price of the products just before they did a
Bug off so people weren't really saving money. They just thought they were
So these days you don't see so many
Occasionally, you'll see one on a special offer
next many of the supermarket's have loyalty cards when you
Go to buy your shopping. They'll say do you have a points card? Do you have a loyalty card and
If you use the card every time
That's the way that you save money over time
Or they send you in the post some
vouchers that you can get a discount next time
Obviously, you're not going to have a loyalty card and it won't be useful for you
it's most useful for people who regularly go to the same supermarket and
You also have to bear in mind about things like loyalty card says
They know what you buy every time if you always use the card
So that could be a good thing in the way that they would send you the discounts more suitable for you
but in another way if you don't want the
Supermarket's to know everything that you buy then you wouldn't be interested in the loyalty card
Okay. Next is the meal deal many
the Tesco Metro for example they have
People go in there to buy their lunchtime
So they didn't prepare anything when they went to work that day, they want to grab their lunch inside Tesco
so there's a meal deal which is generally you can get a
sandwich a packet of crisps and a drink
You get it for a cheaper price because you're buying it all together
The bottle of water separately it will cost you like one pound more or something
so many people get that deal to save money because actually
Sandwiches are the most common lunch the most English people eat at work
But if you go and buy a sandwich in the shop, they're more expensive than you would imagine
A lot of the time if you're not going to have the most plain sandwich just with a slice of cheese in it
They're often quite a few pounds. So
This meal deal is a way to make it seem a bit cheaper that you're getting more value for money
Supermarkets will have brand name products or
Sometimes a mix of the different kinds at different prices. So the brand named
So you might for example have a particular kind of bleach which you use for
The brand named product will be most the most expensive one
But the own named product could be
Half the price it's often a really big price difference
We're encouraged to always bring the carrier bags ourselves now
Because people say it's bad for the environment to use so many plastic bags
So there was a law that was passed about
Now every carrier bag if you want one because you forgot them
You have to pay for it most shops at the moment charge 5p for the carrier bag
So if you go to one of the supermarkets and you're buying shopping for a whole family
That adds up so most people in England I
Find a very good remembering to bring their carrier bags when they go out
So they don't have to pay every single time. They go
Next oh, yeah, and also to mention about those in case you don't know they're always plastic and
For some reason the bag is really really hard to pull apart from the other bags
When they trusted us to touch the carrier bags ourselves when we didn't have to pay for it
Then you would sometimes be there feeling very stressed because there's all these people waiting behind
You and you can't open the bag
So it can be stressful but now because these are very expensive things that we can't touch ourselves
They give them to us so in a way it helps we don't have to open it ourselves
Next in most of the supermarkets
Higher ones or more expensive you'll get an organic
You'll get lots of organic products
Or you'll get an area in the supermarket that sells the organic products all together
there isn't much organic going on in Asda and
let me know in the comments, but I think
Lidl and Audi don't really do it either if you know write in the comments
Ok, another thing you need to know is that
More and more often though cashiers and the supermarket's that do the beep-beep
by self-checkouts and what that means is you are trusted to
Do it yourself scan all your items beep put them in the bag and pay yourself
That you've got something there which you haven't paid for and it thinks you're trying to steal something
unexpected item in bagging area and
once it says that you can't do anything you have to just wait there and
one of the people who work in the supermarket because
You can't you can't leave the supermarket and you can't pay until they've come to check
That you didn't steal something basically, so you will often hear this in an English
Incidentally, not that I'm recommending it, but apparently
there are so many self checkouts now and a lot of places is
Encouraging people to steal because they think that they can get away with it
Well, they can as long as it doesn't say that maybe they could steal an extra potato or whatever. I don't know
It's like the supermarket's trust you
To pay for everything there, but many people don't
Next this is a different kind of shop the corner shop is
Independent shops, so it's not a brand
Name that you would see again like a Tesco or a Sainsbury's. It's
One guys shop often or one family's shop and they
Sell different things and they have a different function
Convenient and close to where you live
So if you live in a city like London, you can walk there very easily from your house
If you live in the countryside
Often they're not that close. You still need to drive there, but they they sell and
Provide they sell the same things and provide the same services
first of all, you can get your fags there that's slang for
They started to hide the cigarettes
So if you you have to ask them for what you want
They don't show you the cigarettes all the time and most shops
Built before that role of hiding the cigarettes. So you see
the the place where the man or the woman stands to
Give the money in everything. You usually see behind them
Just a black blind like a curtain where they're hiding their cigarettes
And I think that's because those if they built the shop design now
They would put something else that you can see that tempts you to buy but hey, that's how it is
Next is booze, which is a slang for
Alcohol so you can buy your beers their bottle of wine that kind of thing
food that you would need to make breakfast or
the really common ingredients that most
The only reason they're buying it from the corner shop is because they ran out that day and they need it now
So example being milk bread butter eggs
Well, it used to be a big thing used to they used to
Do it on television and people would watch but the lotteries been happening for a really long time in England now
maybe 15 years and it's when you buy a
You want the numbers to match?
The numbers that come out of the machine if we do that you win millions of pounds
Not loads and loads of people win obviously, but if you do win you win a lot of money
You can buy those at the corner shop and there's a similar kind of lottery ticket called a scratch card
You find if you win there and then you get a coin and you scratch scratch scratch scratch
If you win you win some money and they can give give the prize to you in the shop
You might not need to use this if you're just visiting England
But a lot of people pay their bills in the corner shop, they'll pay their electric in there
Their gas bill in the corner shop. They have a
They have a something in their till where that where they can do that for you
Also a lot of corner shops have ATM machines
but important to know about that is
That often the ones in the corner shops will charge you money
they'll charge you to take money out so it will be an
Extra one pound fifty on the money that you take if you use the ATM on the street
One that's by a bank. You don't ever have to pay to take your money, but it's different in the corner shop and
it's not so common now because most people
To have contract mobile phones where they pay
Every month and when they're on the contract mobile phone, it goes straight from their bank account
But the people who are not on the contract mobile phone
Can put money on their mobile phone they can top up the mobile phone in
The corner shop you can go in and you you can buy it ten pounds top-up 20 pounds to top-up
Again, it's it's not the only way to top up the mobile phone
you can do it by calling up using your card, but it's
The way people would use to top up their phone if they don't like
Using their credit card either online or over the phone
You could say it's a ripoff. They charge you too much for what you get
You go home and make yourself a nice sandwich. You bite into it and it's like oh
It's old. It's really not nice and
But it has been known that you have to check your change when you leave
Because sometimes it's not enough for them to rip you off
They also have to keep a bit extra as well and a funny
Observation funny story that happened recently
In my local corner shop in London was that some?
Americans came in the shop and
They started buying everything there. They they were treating the corner shop like it was Tesco
Do we need this? Yeah, let's get that grab some of that and
It's not cashier really in the corner shop
It's usually just a small space where money passes and they're putting all the things on there
And the man who's working in the shop. He didn't seem to care. Maybe it wasn't his shop
But if the shop owner was there, he would have been like yes. Yes
Because they were buying everything in there and really that that doesn't tend to happen. You just buy
If you need it, you just buy the one or two things. You don't buy everything in there because it will cost you a fortune
but the Americans didn't know that so maybe they just
Maybe they didn't know where the supermarkets were or something like that or yeah
I think it was that nobody likes to waste money for no reason or buy stale food
That they because they didn't realize
the pitfalls of the corner shop and when we come back we're going to
Look at more to do with shopping in England
Now we're going to look at the other kinds of common shops that you'll find in England
the high street if you think about how old
England is and how old many of the towns are
long time ago was one Street and
Because those towns and cities have grown so much. There's many other streets and
and streets where people live and streets where there are even more shops, but the main
Street right in the centre of the town is what we call the high street
so across England, there are so many roads called High Street because
most old towns, especially probably have place called the high street and
There's no true center of London because it's grown in different directions at different times
Because there was a time where London used to be different
Villages in a way and then they grew together and now it's just all big London. There are
different high streets inside London
So a high street we can best understand it as in your local area
The street where most of the shops are and things like banks
but something else you need to know is that
There are different kinds of high streets and it depends on the area the kinds of shops that you'll find there
what I'd call the down market high street and we have
names of shops that you recognise
whereas in the down market tie straight
independent shops or ones that you haven't seen before it will not look as beautiful and
There's different kinds of shops, so I'll go through the different
Things you'll likely see in the down market high street
First of all, we have Pound shops
buy things that cost a pound I
Guess you guessed that but they will be things like you can buy stationery that costs a pound
Fancy dress things that cost a pound cleaning products or sometimes they are a 99p store
I know that they've stayed a pound shop for a long time
So I think what they do is they just make the things smaller that you buy but a lot of people
Go to the pound shop and buy things
That you don't really want to spend that much money on but you need I think that's
what a lot of people use the pound shop for
So certain things in the home certain cleaning products. Maybe they go and buy them at the pound shop
depends on your country, but not all countries in the world have these and these are
People take the old clothes. They don't want or the old books. They have all the old pieces of furniture and
They give them for free to the charity shop and the charity shop sells them again to other people and
When the charity shop makes money, it makes a profit they spend that on
You know a certain group of people or certain calls like the environment or old people or something
Brand that you'll see around. It's called Oxfam
Sometimes Oxfam is for clothes and sometimes it's for books
Charity shop. You don't in my opinion. You wouldn't get many bargains in there. They usually know what they've got and they'll
Sell it at the price where they can get the most money from it on the other hand
If a charity shop is called a hospice. It means that it's a charity
this money goes to very old people who dying or people who are dying and
Professionally run in the same way. No offense anyone who works in the hospice
But they're not it's not all organized in the same way
So if you want to get some bargains or you like vintage clothes, for example
you're more likely to find that kind of thing in a hospice because
Perhaps the volunteers who work there they don't
They don't know that they've got stuff that
Okay. Next is the idea of the whole of England
town centres that all look the same and
You can call it clone town England or clone town Britain. We have so many chains of shops that
This is the same as that place is the same as that place you you travel to a different area
But it seems like you never left where you came from. It's the same stuff there and I think this is this is really an
Chains there are and how all the towns look the same when I travel sometimes
In other places it's it doesn't seem to have reached that level of having so few
On the downmarket high street will also see mobile phone shops. You can buy
second-hand phones in there new phones
or where if you needed some money quick and
You had some jewelry or a piece of expensive electronic equipment. You could go there and
Give you money that they would give you the money you need today and
Later, if you can you can go and buy that thing back
But if you don't have the money to buy it back you lose it forever and they sell it
kind of thing that I've seen on the English High Street and
This is where you don't have anything
then you can sell you haven't got any jewelry or
expensive watch you have nothing, but you can go there and
Depending on your situation they can they can loan you money for a short time
But they charge a lot a lot of interest to do that. So you you borrow a small amount
But if you don't pay it back quickly, or when you're meant to you will need to pay back so much
So there's more of these around
in a way, it was quite a long time ago the recession that hit England but
When that recession recession hit England, it really changed so many of our high streets to be
Charity shops, because the charity shops
Open in the places where other businesses closed down
Because they don't have to pay as much tax to the government
so you can see an area that is
You can see an area that is really
Financially by how many charity shops there are if if the whole high street is charity shops
It's probably because there's not a lot of jobs in that area and not many successful businesses
Next we have Gregg's Gregg's isn't really a shop
But you see it is not a shop for buying clothes or something
But you tend to see a Gregg's on this kind of high street. A Gregg's is a is a bakery
They sell things like sausage rolls. It's very it's very cheap if you want to get the cheap lunch
So many people buy their meat at the
Supermarket, I think that's why a lot of the old style English butchers closed down
Butchers in the high streets is because if you're a Muslim and it's important to you to eat allow
that's where you can buy it from so there's plenty of those there's plenty of
Asian supermarkets where you can buy
International food oriental food and
You maybe you don't have in your country or if you did come to England. Maybe you were thinking. What is that strange?
And maybe you didn't go in because it was so unusual. You didn't know what it was
well, the betting shop is a place where you can go in and
Place a bet on something like horse-racing
Most of the time it's sporting events. You can place a bet on what's going to happen in the football
But it is also possible to bet on other things like what's the result of an election going to be?
Which famous person is going to win this thing at the Oscars and bla bla bla?
But most people who go in there will be going to bet on the horses and things like that
Maybe it's time to change that and go and put on a bet on something
Upmarket high street, it's a completely different kind of area and in this area
So you will you will see lots of coffee shops here and I've noticed in London
That seems to be more than anything else
Coffee shop coffee shop coffee shop coffee shop is opening. We have so many of them now and
I think we see that in the the change of the change in the culture that we have here in England because
Older times or even when I was younger there were more pubs open and people used to meet in the pub
They still do but the pubs are really expensive now, so
The coffee shops have taken the place of the pub in a lot of a lot of people's lives
Probably have these in your country or you've seen them at their airports in Europe
The other kinds of coffee shops in London
they tend to be a little bit arty a little bit hipster and
England I don't know if they will admit it but there are people in England who
to avoid going to any of these they just hate they hate it that it's so
commercial and they will only go to
Hipster coffee shops. I did actually used to be like that myself
but then I I went to live in Dubai and
In Dubai, everything is a chain place and I agreed to quite like it after that. So I'm definitely not a
coffee shop snob about oh, this one's too much of a chain, but I will say
Which should be the same because there international brands you will often find in London. It is the dirtiest
Dirtiest chain coffee shop that you'll see in any other countries
Messy, no one cleans the tables and the furniture looks old and it looks like they need to paint the walls
Take a lot of a lot of care in many of the coffee shops
Compared to how they do in the other countries just saying
these you will you will find on a very big shopping street and
This is the kind of place people go to do their Christmas shopping
because they they sell so many different kinds of
items in the same place on different floors from cloves to electronic items
That you'll see most often are John Lewis and House of Fraser
decorate decorate their whole house in John Lewis furniture and
It used to be a bigger thing like 20 years ago, I would say
When when fashion didn't change so quickly and you could you could buy things at a cheaper price
people really enjoyed going to these kinds of
Department stores because they sell lots of different brands in the same place and they make it easy for you as a shopper
So yeah, but you will only you will know you see this in a very big shopping
straight a
more local shopping straight you'll see a deli a
Kinds of meat maybe it's an Italian deli
Food that they've cooked for lunch
Which they cooked actually cooked there
In their kitchen, so the lunch from here will be a little bit more expensive often. It's organic or special in some way
That you really only see florists in an area where the weather people will have
Extra money to be buying expensive flowers
Book shops are also an increasingly rare thing these days people
Electronically or on their phone or they just don't read books. So wherever you see a book shop tends to be an area where
Sophisticated class of people living who would enjoy having a bookshop close by rather than just order them off
Also, we have shops for buying gifts they are usually
More tailored towards things that women like cute things
This they sell cards if it's somebody's birthday. You can buy them a card
We also have health food shops where you can go buy
Alternative medicines also a bit of organic food you can buy
Sometimes they have an area for massages in there and things like that
So it's a mix of things that you get but you again you only see them
would have money to to buy those products because they tend to be quite expensive all the vitamins or the or the
Alternative medicines. They they they're if they opened in this high street. No one would be able to afford it and
The last shop will find there is the wine merchant
The wine merchant is the place for buying alcohol where they have
Thought about the selection and there they really know about the wines that they're selling
So for people who have dinner parties and things like that or people who are really enthusiastic
About wine and eating. This is probably where they go to buy their alcohol and
I'm just going to go through this list of shops relatively quickly. These are all shops that sell
clothing and this list is the list of the
It's the top ten of shops that sell the most cloves in England
so what's really interesting about this list is we see Marks & Spencer at the top and I
But yet out of all these shops is they still sell the most cloves?
So they they're definitely a big business in England
sort of mainstream kind of close shop where you can buy office wear and
They follow trends and fashion, maybe a little bit more slowly than a lot of places
they're not they're not trying to be really fashionable or whatever, but that
For the for the people who shop at next I suppose
That's why they like it and they also are famous for when they have a sale
Know they start the sale when the shop opens
But people queue up to go into their sale from like four o'clock in the morning
They really want to get the next bargains when it happens
Next we have Primark Primark is known to be the cheap fast fashion
where most tops are very very cheap in there if you're buying women's clothes and
I think it's so cheap. That's something that happens is people go in there and they they buy more things
Then they don't bother to try it on because it's so cheap
They buy the things and perhaps they don't end up wearing some of it once they get at home
they just got carried away because it was cheap and
Especially on a busy day like a Saturday
Don't really respect the shop or the clothes in it. So people will drop things on the floor and then someone else will come walking
Stamp all over it and walk off and the and it gets a huge mess in there because there's so many people
grabbing stuff putting it back
so it's a they have a very big one in the famous shopping street, which is
believe it's in Marble Arch in London, and that is
Only for the brave to go in there, especially at Christmas time
Our different brands you'll find on English high streets or in English shopping centres
They look like they're they are different because these shops are to attract different customers
But actually they're all the same company. They're all part of the same group, but this shop
26 27 is their main people that they attract
But Topshop has become more like edgy fashion
clothes that you might wear if you're going to a club or
You're not you want to look my opinion. You want to look sexy rather than look fashionable. That's what Miss Selfridge is for
They will they go up to much higher clothes sizing in there
Older older ladies. So although they're all part of the same
One big company they appeal to different
Next we have George. This is the clothing that sold in Asda
But they are different because they sell their own clothes also
Closed fashion store for young young women
clothes from other companies and other shops and
They sell it in their shop but for cheaper
You can go in there and you can get
Good bargains. It's like a permanent sale, basically and
Sometimes there's a brand that's normally very expensive in other shops
But when they when they sell it you get it at the best price. So that's the reason a lot of people like TK Maxx
In the we have Tesco clothes in the big Tesco supermarkets, they they have a lot of clothing they're not just
Fashion clothes. They also have things like school, you know school uniform pajamas and things like that and
The last shop in the list is H&M and that's another
age range in their stores, they will have the very fashionable area and they'll have the middle age area and they'll have
men's women's and children so they do a lot of
They have lots of different groups of people that they serve so usually we see
H&M in the in the big shopping streets or the shopping centres because their stores are normally quite big
That you you've know something about now for when you come to England and you go shopping or you need something
Thank you so much for watching
What I suggest for you to do now is you do the quiz on this lesson. Bye