Waitrose Unpacked – A New Start or a False Dawn?

You mission, should you chose to accept it...

Tuesday morning, I packed a box full of Tupperware in various sizes and threw it in the boot of the car, my destination the Waitrose Unpacked shop on Oxford’s Botley Road. A few bothersome hours at work got in the way, but soon after noon I was speeding around the drizzle-soaked ring road towards Botley. The route was familiar – about a year ago I was a regular visitor here on my lunch breaks, taking advantage of the discounts at the soon-to-be-defunct Toys R Us. It’s still there, the Toys R Us, as no one seems to have wanted to rent the huge and presumably costly floor space which was part of that chain’s downfall.

Anyway, I digress. I had orders from Plastic Redacted HQ after exciting reports in the Waitrose weekend magazine, to pick up as many of our staples as possible – pasta, rice, cereals, and frozen chips and peas at the new Waitrose unpacked pilot. The shop looked fairly busy as I swung into the car park around 12.15, the lunchtime trade in full flow. Camera in hand, I snapped a few surreptitious shots as I went – there was no need to be surreptitious, of course, but it made the experience more fun.

Entering the shop, the first thing you see is a display counter bearing the Unpacked logo which reminds you that you can buy re-useable containers from Waitrose should you have neglected to bring your own. There’s also a couple of cereal dispensers of the type you get at a breakfast buffet in a hotel, with a notice saying “Display Only” – I do wonder how many keen and excitable eco-shoppers go straight for them and try to fill up on ethical Rice Krispies, as I first felt the urge to do!

A little treasure trail-style map lays out the shop, indicating that you just follow the trail and pick up all your packaging-free items. The first section was fruit and veg, which I wasn’t shopping for on this occasion, so I passed through quite quickly. The fruit and veg all seemed to be loose, and although the shop does provide plastic bags to put your items in, these are all of the compostable caddy-liner variety.

Next was the fish and meat counter. This is just like any other fish/meat counter in any other supermarket. If you bring your own container, though, you get 10% off, which is worth having. I bought some mince. My next Bolognese will taste both good value and plastic-free.

After the meat and fish counter, the shop starts to feel very much like any other supermarket, with the standard aisles of packaged goods. To be honest, this was a bit of a disappointment – not Waitrose’s fault, but the shop had been talked up in the press as a bold experiment, so it was a bit deflating to be traipsing up and down the usual aisles of plastic-packaged favourites.

The heart of the shop, and the Unpacked experiment, is the Refill Station. Here you can whip out your Tupperware and go crazy – well, a bit crazy. Being a pilot scheme, the Refill Station is quite modest in size and selection of produce on offer. They’ve gone, sensibly, for refills of dry and durable products that aren’t going to melt, shatter, or fall to pieces. So you get the cereal dispensers filled with some cereals (Krispies, Porridge), a few types of pasta (not spaghetti – too breakable, presumably), rice (including brown, white and risotto), and whole foods like lentils, cous cous etc.

The system is clear and easy to use. You weigh your box and print out a sticky label with a barcode onto it. Then you fill it with stuff, and re-weigh it, scanning the first barcode as you do. You then get a second barcode sticker wherein the cost of your empty box has been deducted. You get the hang of it very quickly, and then if you’re anything like me you get a bit cocky and hasty, and start filling your box without weighing it first. Luckily you can easily pour anything back into a dispenser before you sheepishly go back and weigh your empty box.

The other refill offerings which have been quite media-friendly are the beer and wine refills. You bring your own bottle (or barrel, I suppose), and they’ll fill it for you. We have an empty screwtop bottle at home for the purpose, but I didn’t bring it on this trip. Seemed like it would be a popular option, though.

The shop also offers a “we will prepare your veg for you” service, which I didn’t investigate but which seemed to imply they would chop up things like butternut squash for you and then you can pop chopped veg into your Tupperware.

Frozen food was a bit of a letdown – no loose chips or peas on offer, instead a rather odd (to me at least) little selection of things like frozen mango chunks. Millet’s Farm in Abingdon has a better selection of practical loose frozen foodstuffs, chips and peas included. But remember, this Waitrose is a pilot, so you can’t expect them to have everything, yet. I did get some loose coffee beans for Vicky – could have ground them for her too, but I wouldn’t want to deny her the pleasure of using her Kenwood mixer for that task.

The rest of the shop was a bit of an Emperor’s New Clothes experience, to be honest, being a normal Waitrose in almost every respect, with lots of plastic and packaged goods on the shelves. There was one more refill station for detergent, but on the day I went, it was out of order.

Mission accomplished!

So, the big question – would we do it again? It’s a “yes, if…” answer from me. Yes, if (beyond a pilot scheme) it had enough of the items that we regularly need to stock up on, i.e. if they can broaden the range of offerings which are really “unpacked”. The Refill Station was great and the system was easy to use, so for things like cous cous which are hard to find sans plastic packaging, it was ideal. But I’d also want to have other cereals (Weetabix is essential!) and frozen foods – in fact, I’d want as many foods as possible to be freed from their packaging. I don’t know whether the “wet” foods you get in cans would be as suitable for the dispenser approach (baked beans, tomato soup), as there might be a risk of contamination and/or mouldiness, but in theory it would be great if you could fill your Tupperware with more than just dry goods.

The other thing to remember is that we can already buy a lot of the food and household items we need in an “unpacked” form in Wallingford by going to the market, the butcher, and the Fair Trade shop. The Waitrose version is not better than any of these, just a different outlet, and it is (in its current location) obviously a lot further from home. But if it were to be introduced across all Waitrose shops, then yes, I can see us using the Unpacked service (or rather self-service), if only for the sake of convenience.