A few years ago, some friends came to stay with us on Exmoor. After they unfurled from their Volvo, they presented us with some unctuous Parma ham and a few bottles of Barolo, all of which I received eagerly. ‘Thank you so much!’ I cried, adding, ‘Such a shame we don’t have any Charentais melons, otherwise we could have this as a starter tonight!’
Even though he’d just ferried his family four hours from Primrose Hill and up our bone-shaking unmade track to reach the valley, Justin looked stricken at the thought of Parma ham sans melon. ‘No problem, I’ll run and get some,’ he said, jumping back into the driver’s seat. Then he poked his head out of the window. ‘Where’s your nearest Waitrose?’ he asked, as if there would be one in the village.
I still don’t know where the nearest Waitrose is (Bristol? Barnstaple?) But the point is this: for the middle-class foodie shopper (i.e. cooks from scratch, doesn’t flinch at complicated Ottolenghi recipes demanding dozens of ‘foreign’ ingredients called things like zaatar and freekeh), Waitrose, which has a 5 per cent market share in the UK, has always been the numero uno assoluto supermarket in the country.
It was also the ultimate middle-class signifier. When a Waitrose arrived in town, it was the first sign of gentrification. There’s a Twitter account called ‘Overheard in Waitrose’, which keeps a long till receipt of all the ways the shop is not just middle class, but upper-middle. Brioche is in the ‘essentials’ range (reminding us of course that Marie Antoinette said, ‘qu’ils mangent de la brioche’, not ‘let them eat cake’). The Twitter account lists things customers have said, such as ‘Arabella, I’ll never be able to lift all this San Pellegrino into the Range Rover’, and ‘Darling, do we need Parmesan for both our houses?’
More recently, however, there have been more complaints, along the lines of ‘No fresh caponata, again! It’s like Paris in the Commune around here!’ Or, ‘No preserved lemons? Where are we exactly — East Berlin?’
Partners, customers and industry observers are beginning to notice that Waitrose is going downhill.
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