Tesco

Terrible shop, erratically stocked and incompetently staffed.
Please don’t mistake this as an anti-​capitalist rant about Tesco taking over our high streets and forcing out the little shops. This is a fully reasoned and justified assessment of what is an absolute shambles of a mini-​supermarket. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been here and have left without obtaining my whole shopping list. Items that should be in stock all the time are reguarly missing, things like toothpaste or toilet rolls or stock cubes. Everyday things, nothing too much to expect a shop to have in stock, the last incident occured a few days back when I wanted mozzarella and microwave popcorn. I went home empty handed on both fronts.
Avoid at all costs.

My housemates and I usually walk further up the road to Sainsburys because this particular Tesco is awfully merchandised with very poor selection, especially of fish or meat.

It’s a novelty having a Tesco in the area, even if it is only one of the smaller Express stores. I’ve tried it a few times and found it more expensive than Morrison’s on Stamford Hill and obviously with far less choice.
They do have a small selection of wines, but not as wide as a regular Tescos, and all the wines on offer were sold out. (But it was Christmas/​New Year, so par for the course I suppose.)
Having poked my nose in here a couple of times, I won’t be hurrying back it’s not worth going out of my way for on either a price or choice basis.

Very good local Tesco, open til 11 at night, usually with a few reduced items. Because of its size it doesn’t have a great range of products, eg it has some stationery but not padded envelopes, and seems to cater mostly for the police station next door, but it’s great if you just want to pop in for a snack late.

Tesco have thoughtfully provided the only free cash point in Newington Green outside this new branch of it’s Tesco Metro chain, although that is one of the few good things about this branch of tescos. The other good thing is the extreme friendliness of the staff — i know they’re trained to be, but it does seem genuine friendliness, which is rare in such a place i find. There are good offers to be had on junk food (which takes up about a quarter of the shop) and wines instore, as well as cheap flowers, but apart from that there’s nothing that you won’t find just as cheap and often better quality in other local shops such as the many turkish grocery stores in the area. One other thing is that they have a BAD freezer, everything inside is always covered in snow, i made the mistake of buying some icecream from there once and it was of course, full of ice, as it had defrosted and been refrozen.

On the smaller end of Tesco stores, though I find they have quite an attractive choice of products, including my favourite mid range yogurts with the lovely hazel (though I saw these substituted with a caramelly brazil nut yogurt in another branch yesterday, so I’m dreading that they’ve discontinued them, sniff). Anyway, while I find many branches have their quirks (expert shopping manglers in Kingsland Road, and overactive store detectives in Finsbury), nothing of note has come to my attention here. I think that’s probably a good thing