Supermarket rant

Like most people, we go shopping every week to buy food and other groceries. We dodge trolleys, kids running around and all that other fun stuff that makes weekend shopping a joy. Even though my mind is already overpowered by the immense excitement of choosing the best looking rotisserie chicken, I can't help thinking of things that could make life easier or help make a rocking gravy for Sunday lunch. A few weeks ago I had these thoughts:

Chicken stock

Each week we buy rotisserie chicken from the hot food counter. When we get it home and I start to break down the chicken, I save the liquidy chicken stock stuff that remains in the bag to add to the gravy and it made me wonder why these supermarkets don't save this drained gravy gold to pot up and sell at their hot food counters as fresh gravy stock? I'd buy it.

Veggie weigh in

At our local Sainsburys, they have two aisles of fresh fruit and veg. With the store promoting the use of the self-scanners, we've become regular users of the available scales, of which there are two. On many occasions one of the scales is out of order which often leads to queues of people at the remaining one waiting to weigh their goods to obtain a barcoded sticker. When it's busy this is annoying and ends up being a supermarket traffic cop nightmare. To add to the problem, the weighing scale onscreen interface is terrible to use and is too open to human error.

While queuing up waiting for the scales one day, I thought why don't they put scales and sticker dispensers under each box of loose produce. Take a reading first thing to get the overall weight and then as customers take items, you can work out the weight of the individual item by deducting it from the total. The consumer then gets a sticker with the correct pricing for their goods. No more queuing and no more confusing interfaces to deal with. Just pick stuff up, get a barcode and you're gone.

Fairly random piece to post, I know, but I wanted to get it out there in case someone hasn't already thought of it. I'll make millions!

Ok, probably not.