MANIFESTO

Greetings traveler.  You've found it. This is it. Your journey is over. Collapse in a heap of exhausted satisfaction as your long search has come to an end; this is a blog providing in-depth, analytic critiques of the different outlets of Waitrose.

My name is Des, although compared to the task at hand that's relatively unimportant. Just know that I have been charged with the task, which is of biblical proportions. I can't say I chose the task, and to say it chose me would be granting myself more significance than I could justifiably entertain. The task presented itself, and I was fortunate enough to feel able to undertake it. If you're starting to build a picture in your head of me as some kind of modern-day Messiah figure then a would urge moderation. Am I a Messiah? Answer: we simply don't know yet.

So why Waitrose? The cynics among you will immediately think that it's because I, in some way, regard Waitrose as a superior supermarket chain to the others. Oh you cynics. This time you have some truth in what you cynically cooked up in those stunted and twisted little minds of yours. I regard Waitrose as a far superior supermarket to all the others, but for one perhaps surprising reason above the other possible ones. Yes they have better quality produce than other chains. Yes their ethical business approach is above and beyond the rest of the field. But my main reason for regarding Waitrose as superior, and also the fundamental reason as to why it is possible to undertake the task at hand, is the diversity within the chain itself. You go to one Tesco or Asda or Sainsbury's and you have been to them all. When you walk into a branch of Waitrose somewhere on this floating rock we call 'Britain', whilst you can be assured you will find a reassuring level of familiarity, this familiarity stops far short of becoming repetitive. There is enough unpredictability to mean crossing the threshold at a branch for the first time is always, even in some small way, a step into the unknown. Will there be a separate Patisserie counter? How large will the Salad Bar be? Will they have the fabled Ostrich Egg on sale? Will there be a Cafe? If you were to draw a Venn diagram with circles representing all the different combinations of features that each Waitrose branch could have, it would look like the cross section of some sort of flipping crazy swiss cheese made by a mad man (I would never use a Venn diagram in the task, the reasons for which will be explained below).

What are my criteria? Answer: there are none. There will be no box-ticking or template use in this task. None. If you are looking for a rating system of some kind then this is not for you. Stop reading immediately. Some lesser men (or women...but I am a man) would probably have devised some rating scale, awarding different criteria a score out of 5 or 10 or some other arbitrary number. Some even lesser men (or women... from hence forth the term men shall be meant to encompass the species as a whole. If you are a woman and feel that this is overlooking your gender then stop reading, this is not for you) would even have got out their Photoshop and made a stencil of a little rose and then given roses out of a possible 5 or something. I'm in the business of nuances not absolutes. Quantifying the good or bad points of each of the branches would be doing them a diservice. I wish above all else to furnish you, traveler, with a deeply visceral and layered conception of what each store is like. I'm not a numbers man, and I never will be. I was born with a gut, not a calculator dammit and so were you. Use it.

So am I qualified? Yes I clearly am. Have you read the last two paragraphs?

One further point must be made clear. The reports I generate in the task at hand should not be construde in any way as advertising for Waitrose. The dim-witted (and you cynics, haven't forgotten about you) will be saying that I clearly must be advocating the purchase of foods or other goods from Waitrose. I'm not. Two reason why I am not: firstly, I am assuming anyone who is motivated to engage with the task at hand has already made up their mind that Waitrose is a bit of alright already, and secondly, I will only ever encourage readers to enter a Waitrose branch, but the decision to buy anything is completely up to you (the reader, the traveler; these words I will use interchangeably for the same descriptive purpose). Many's the time I have gone into a Waitrose without the urge to buy anything, simply to explore new horizons.

If you are expecting regularity or timeliness in the posting of critiques then please stop reading, this is not for you either. I do 'em as I do 'em yeah? If you can't deal with a little unpredictability in your life then you're not welcome here, and should reconsider darkening the door of a Waitrose (for reasons explained above). If you are also expecting properly spell-checked and grammatically sound prose then cease reading also.  I will put in a level of effort into checking my spelling and grammar that I see fit, no more no less.

There are a lot of negatives in this initial passage thus far but let me assure you that the negatives needed to be gotten out of the way first so that all that really remains for us (those of you that are left) is constructive.


Enough squawking, the task awaits!