Mere, not to be confused with you know who, a Russian supermarket chain already operating in the eastern EU, with prices claimed to be a lot lower than even Aldi and Lidl, is opening four stores in the UK, two in Lancashire and two in north Wales. Expensive Waitrose it ain't
Never mind the quality, go for the low low price. I do wonder what standards of hygiene, pesticide use and animal welfare are adopted in Russia. I suspect that this newcomer will attract a lot of consumer interest. We will see.
Russian-founded discounter giant gearing up to open four UK stores | News | The Grocer 
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Where we are - MERERETAIL
What got me was you could buy simple things like bottles of water or Coca-Cola much cheaper than the UK equivalents.
So they bring labelled bottles of water all the way from Poland and sell it for 20p while a bottle of water in Tesco costs 50p.
Maybe Tesco are just taking the piss?
There's three types of water (bottled) that are sold. The main one being, simply, bottled water. Essentially people are paying for tap water that's been treated (with no requirement to list the treatment(s) on the labelling) before selling back to the public at stupid costs. It's the same con that saw Dasani (of Coca-Cola fame) fail miserably when launched in the UK. Okay, it was also not too long after the OFAH episode about Peckham Spring, but they tried their luck anyway. Seems it's now commonplace and accepted by most. Mental!!
A food discounter founded in Russia with a claimed 3,200 stores internationally is gearing up to open its first branches in the UK this summer.
Svetofor was founded in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia in 2009 and has been opening stores in Europe since 2018 under the name Mere. The business has stores in Germany, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine, with plans for more soon in Italy, Spain, Greece and Bulgaria as well as the UK.
Suppliers are being approached about four planned UK stores, including two in Wales, in Mold and Caldicot, and two in the north of England, in Preston and Castleford. The first, in a former Nisa in Preston’s Ribbleton, is scheduled to open next month, according to Mere UK head of buying Pavels Antonovs.
A no-frills model sees suppliers expected to deliver directly to stores, which also act as the business’ warehouses. Each will be about 10,000 sq ft, and will include a walk-in chiller room and “huge freezer”, allowing multi-temperature ranges to be sold directly from the pallets on which they arrive.
The business prides itself on the extreme simplicity of the model, which it likens to a Costco but with no membership fee and no in-store service. Antonovs said this would allow it to undercut even the cheapest UK supermarkets by 20%-30%.
Each store is to have a maximum of 1,200 SKUs and only eight staff, including a director, four cashiers and three to handle deliveries.
“We are the gap in the market,” said Antonovs. “We don’t have any competitors.
“Our model is no service and no marketing.”
The business’ terms and conditions for suppliers say stock is bought on a “sale or return basis”, meaning Mere “pays only for goods sold, returning those that are unsold to the seller”.
It’s a condition that has made some wary of signing up, with one potential supplier describing the arrangement as “extremely rare in a large-scale food retail setting”. The payment terms would leave suppliers “effectively funding shrinkage”, added the source.
Antonovs said: “Some will understand us, some won’t. There are already around 30 business that will 70% fill our shops.
“I have just now met with a manufacturer with a turnover of £150m and we signed for eight SKUs.
“On 13 March, we opened a store in Latvia and the queue outside was 570 people. In Germany, when we opened our first store, it had been bought out [of stock] in two days.”
They said no.
They only do chicken and lamb.
Does the UK selling massive amounts of arms abroad bother you to the extent that you'd consider boycotting British products?
Sorry if I seem like I'm digging you out, but this is the circle I go around in when I consider this issue.
It seems to me that it's easy to get caught up in western propaganda against Russia and China....
And I say that having lived in Xinjiang and being married to an Uyghur.
Can you justify why you have singled these two out for special treatment?
I imagine you must have thought it through well enough so am interested to hear your thinking/justification
Solidarity with the innocent dead citizen in Salisbury who found the tube of Novicok, and the policeman who fought for his life and lost his career? Not to mention the Skripals themselves and Alexander Litvinenko before them, all UK citizens?
Solidarity with the people of HK, our former colony, whom we have left to a pretty grim future.
Russian jets and ships shadow British warship - BBC News
The treatment of Australia, the Philipines etc.
Cheap goods filling our landfill.
The bullying of Taiwan.
Covid.
India.
Russia.
Trying to de-stabilise the west.
Salisbury.
Ukraine,
etc.