M&S is to start selling branded products* in its Irish stores. Up to 450 brands, including Coca Cola, Kellogg’s, Barry’s, and Tayto will be phased into all 20 M&S stores by the middle of September.
It’s a big leap for the retailer, which has always prided itself on selling only its own produce, but it’s worked [...]

More new specials in my new, officially favourite regular* supermarket. The current set includes:

Irish spring leg of lamb - half price - now €6.99 per kg
Selection of half price Superquinn cakes
Superquinn chilled juice range - any 2 for €3

The offers are valid until Tuesday August 24. Click here for details.
(*Regular: Tesco, Superquinn, SuperValu and Dunnes. [...]

Very little surprises in the latest National Consumer Agency price survey. Unsurprisingly and most significantly, there’s a negligible price difference between the big four supermarkets.

The cost of groceries has fallen by 14 per cent since January 2009 and the number of special offers has risen.
The survey found almost no price difference on a basket [...]

For the past few years, the Republic’s retailers have watched in despair as their fickle customers fled across the border in search of cheaper prices and better deals. But according to Conor Pope in today’s Pricewatch, the days of cross-border shopping are numbered.
A less favourable exchange rate, a planned VAT hike in the UK, and [...]

Some of you may have noticed a post in the Irish Times’ Pricewatch blog a few weeks back where Conor Pope asked if readers’ favourite brands had started disappearing from their local Tesco; some of you may even have left your feedback.  There was a follow-up piece on it in yesterday’s Pricewatch column, and it [...]

It was this time last year that Cheapeats covered a price comparison survey by The National Consumer Agency of Ireland that showed a drop in food prices in Ireland in the first half of 2009.
Well, it would seem that dream is over and prices are creeping back up across the board.
All was revealed in a [...]

Time magazine had a very interesting and revealing piece on the world’s worst fast food - most of which was in the States. The meals included a particularily revolting looking ‘Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries’ which was a whopping 2,140 Calories - more than the recommended daily allowance.
The article also featured a salad from ‘Taco [...]

Pie fans will be pleased to hear that the excellent UK chain Pieminister have set up a stall in the Point Village Market in Dublin’s Docklands, and will be selling their pies there every weekend throughout the summer.
Via On the Record and multiple tipsters on Twitter.

In today’s Pricewatch, Paul Cullen explores the topic of misleading food labels. It’s a really useful, comprehensive article for anyone who’s ever picked up a shopping basket, with information on everything from environmental claims to the difficulty of tracing the origin of chicken and the use of meaningless terms such as “traditional” or “country-style.”
There’s plenty [...]

Note that it is international Grandmother’s Day on April 25th, and for the second year running Slow Food Ireland will be celebrating in earnest. How? By celebrating those precious skills that might otherwise be lost: think, baking cakes, sewing seeds and catching fish. Grandparents, Slow Food Ireland remind us, are the “guardians of inherited wisdom,” [...]