Just got a free newspaper and a cup of coffee from Waitrose. I don’t drink coffee but Anne does so I got her a black one to maximise the chance of it staying warm until I got it home. We only live 5 mins away.
I don’t read hard copy newspapers either. I get them all on the internet, at least those without a paywall. Now this did give me a bit of a dilemma. Here I was taking a freebie totally gratuitously knowing that I probably wouldn’t read it. My thinking was that it would come in handy to light the firepit this weekend. Not great from a planet saving perspective.
This marketing tactic of Waitrose has to be working big time. Anne never used to go there but she often does now. One of her friends just pops in for a coffee without even buying anything. The cost of a few coffee beans is nothing compared with the additional revenues from their more expensive quality groceries and they will get their papers at a heavily discounted wholesale rate.
I’ll finish with a little snippet of a conversation held with my wife over sms:
Anne: Fiery red rice for the salad available in Waitrose
Me: Yay – you can rely on Waitrose to get the basics right
:))
Other Waitrose related posts:
3 replies on “Waitrose free paper and coffee – a partial dilemma #savetheplanet”
Having just been to M&S (we do not have Waitrose in NE Scotland): (a) I cannot see the idea of free catching on in these parts … (2) Despite your Parthian shot their tactics are so successful that you have given them free PR and your wife is happy. Bliss
Never let it be said I can’t be bought.
I always said that broadband ‘should’ have been ‘free’ for anyone with a telephone line. If we’re gonna be tied to a monopoly who already had the infrastructure it could easily have been a bolt on. They could then have had a big enough customer base to upgrade the infrastructure to a proper fibre one (a fibre to every home and business).
There’s no such thing as ‘free’. I know that. But if its perceived as free people would have tried it sooner and got hooked sooner and we’d be well on the way to a proper digital britain instead of this halfarsed one.