Cheaper Festive Cheer.

Food One of our post-Christmas traditions is watching the Marks & Spencer's website watching for the hampers to reduce in price and hoping to actually by online when this happens so we can snatch one up before anyone else does. This year, I thought I'd try and pre-empt things and see how cheap the hamper we usually end up with, the Festive Cheer, is if you simply buy all the separate items and if this would be cheaper anyway.

Today I visited the shop and did the leg work.

Here it is on the M&S website. It's £30, which as we always say every year seems quite expensive for what you get.

In the shop the same hamper is on sale for £25 but it's called something else like "Give Cheer".

With the brochure I worked my way around the isles, collected the bits and jotted down the prices.  Here's what I found. The price is in bold.

Christmas Tea (125g) £1.60
Spiced Mandarin Marmalade (295g) £3
Tomato & Basil Soup (400g) 0.90p
Strawberry & Champagne Conserve (295g) £3
Top iced Christmas cake (600g) £3.30
Classic Christmas pudding (100g) £1.25
All butter Scottish shortbread rounds (180g) £1.50
Wild Alaskan Red Salmon (170g) £3.00

Milk dark white chocolate box (220g)  (Not available on its own in the Liverpool shop but 200g boxes of other chocolate available for £4.)

Total:  £21.65

Which is cheaper.  Buying in store, you're essentially paying an extra couple of pounds for a nice box.

But this is over eight pounds cheaper than online.

We bought it.  Apart from the chocolates.  So for once we can enjoy it before Christmas.

No comments: