Asda has announced that it will roll out its full Smart Price and Farm Stores value ranges to all of its 581 food stores and online. The move comes after anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe raised concerns that low-income shoppers were being additional squeezed at a time of high inflation because they could no longer get hold of the budget products.
Asda currently stocks 150 Smart Price and Farm Stores products in 300 of its stores. All 200 products in these value ranges will now feature across its estate by 1 March.
Meanwhile, the supermarket has added 100 Smart Price and Farm Stores products to its website this week, increasing the total online range to 187 products. This will rise to 200 by the end of February.
“We want to help our customers’ budgets stretch further and have taken on board the comments about the availability of our Smart Price range made by Jack Monroe,” said Meg Farren, Asda’s Chief Customer Officer.
“We are taking steps to put our full Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in store and online to make these products as accessible as possible.”
In recent weeks, Monroe has highlighted that the price of basic food staples was going up faster than other products. She had also criticised Asda for discontinuing some budget products, such as a bag of rice sold for 45p and replacing it with rice costing a minimum of £1.20.
In response to Asda’s move to improve the availability of the value ranges, Monroe tweeted: “Well, that went rather well.”
Over the weekend, the chairman of Tesco, John Allan, warned that the worst of food inflation is yet to come, with prices likely to rise 5% by the spring as energy and other expenses feed through to products on the shelf.
