Food campaigner Jack Monroe praises Asda for making Smartprice range cheaper

13 February 2022, 09:09 | Updated: 13 February 2022, 09:10

Food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has praised a supermarket for hitting back in the cost of living crisis and offering customers cheaper prices on certain goods.

Jack heaped praise on Asda for cutting the cost of goods in its Smartprice range.

She posted a series of tweets highlighting how the chain had put prices back on some of it’s basic range of goods.

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However her tweets come after a study showed supermarket staples like pasta, tinned tomatoes and strawberry jam increased in price by around 8 per cent in just one year.

According to a recent analysis, the overall price of a basket of 15 standard food items rose by £1.32.

Retail research firm Assosia, tracked the average cost of grocery items at Asda, Morrison’s Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

She wrote on Twitter yesterday: “Woke up this morning and realised I couldn’t procrastinate my food shop for a day longer, and decided it was time - three and a half weeks on from my accidentally viral tweet about the prices of basic foods at the supermarket - to brave it, and see what, if anything, had changed.

“”This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (Asda, Shoeburyness), was 29p for 500g. Last month it jumped to 70p. That was a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households. I literally held my breath as I turned into the pasta aisle.

“This time last year, the cheapest rice at the same supermarket was 45p for a kilogram bag. Then it jumped to £1 for 500g. That was a 344% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households. Today, look what I found. Back to 45p for a kilogram bag.”

She highlighted how Smart Price pasta, rice, beans, tinned spaghetti, curry sauce and peanut butter jars had all dropped in price.

“The turnaround for this has been almost immediate - the speed at which they responded, not just with words, but with exactly what they said they would do - has been absolutely remarkable.

“The impact that this will have on millions of people, is impossible to overstate. And of all of the supermarkets that reached out to me in the last weeks, Asda have been the only ones to actually act on our conversations and make things right.”

Asda said it would stock its Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in all 581 food stores and online by March 1 to help its customers with the cost-of-living crisis. All branches will have the full range of 200 Smart Price and Farm Stores lines, the company said after Jack highlighted how the range had been disappearing from shelves.

Meg Farren, Asda's chief customer officer, said: "We want to help our customers' budgets stretch further and have taken on board the comments about the availability of our Smart Price range made by Jack Monroe.

"We are taking steps to put our full Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in store and online to make these products as accessible as possible."