Cost of incidentals in London
 

What are the prices of common items that are purchased on a daily basis? For instance:
Newspaper
Bottled water
Cup of coffee (not the fancy type)
Cigs
Candy bar, pack of gum
Pay phone call (local)
Sunscreen
Small bag of crisps

I am hoping the prices are simalar to what I am used to but probably should double everything. Anyway, just curious, thereyet

"I am hoping the prices are simalar to what I am used to"

The following applies if you are American: The prices are similar to what you are used to, except they are in £'s, so yes, you will be paying double. :-D That's always been my observation when traveling in London. I hope a British poster can give you more precise info.

BTW, tap water in London is quite good. I always refill my bottle from the faucet.

Newspaper - Mass market one like the Sun around 30p. Proper one like the Telegraph or Guardian - 70p

Bottled water - depends where you buy it - in supermarkets a big bottle costs bobbins. In central London a small bottle from a small shop can be £1 or more

Cup of coffee (not the fancy type) - there is only the fancy type. God knows - coffee is Satan's work.

Cigs - bout £5.50 for 20

Candy bar, pack of gum - chocolate bar 50p ish - Gum - no idea

Pay phone call (local) - minimum charge is 30p, after that it gets cheaper (phones in pubs etc cost a LOT more)

Sunscreen - In England?

Small bag of crisps - about 30p

Cup of coffee in a chain place - unlikely to be much less than £1.25, unless it's instant in a greasy spoon. More in a posh restaurant, obviously.

Sunscreen: well, it all depends. Here's the range at Boots:

http://tinyurl.com/337tku

It's easy for there to be a 3-fold variation in price or more, depending where you purchase these items. Except for the newspaper - that will be more or less the same anywhere.

Otherwise, go to Tesco.

The good news? No tax is added at point of sale. :)

Do;t know were you're from but don;t assume prices based on your home town. Assume prices in London will be double (due to pound/dollar difference) what you would pay in New York - not Peoria.

Audere, let me just wishfully think I'll need the sunscreen! I think an outing to Tesco will be one of my first adventures. Actually quite interested in looking for differences and simalarities to what I find here in California. I think grocers are Flanneruk's specialities are they not. Anyway, thanks for the loads of information my friends, thereyet

Thereyet - Do you have 'self-service grocery scanning' in the US? If not, that's one difference you might find, since some Tesco's have it here in the UK.

Having said that, our local store currently has the SS tills taped off - presumably due either to user incompetance or people deliberately forgetting to scan their HobNobs!

RM67, we do have SS checkout at select stores. Funny thing is I still see clerks waiting customers at those lanes and really don't see the purpose of SS. So, no I haven't used them. If I saw some benefit maybe I would. lets say a DISCOUNT for apperently saving the store money on employing real people! thereyet

If you're interested in differences and similarities to California, you're probably going to the wrong place.

Central London has exceptionally expensive property ("real estate" in some minor dialects) and a population that's often relatively rich, frequently very feckless but universally short of time.

So the overwhelming majority of its food shops these days are either mom + pop (sometimes franchised) convenience stores or else "metro" or "express" (tiny, highly tailored ranges, relatively high prices) versions of the major supermarket chains, all of them strongly influenced (though their management would let a supplier get a price increase before they'd admit it) by Marks & Spencer. A surprising proportion of central London residents get their groceries delivered through Web systems, often supplied from off-centre warehouses. The classiest version of this is Ocado.

If you want to know what a British version of a Vons or Albertson's looks and feels like, you've normally got to get out into the suburbs. There are few exceptions a tourist can easily get to: even the Sainsbury's in Victoria Street is now specially ranged (and, I understand, priced) for its office-worker-at-lunchtime clientele.

Sainsbury's in Chapel Market, N1 (near Camden Passage), or Waitrose by Gloucester Road tube are just about the the only two normal (over 30,000 sq ft) supermarkets in central London really convenient for public transport. The clear, overwhelming, leader in this industry is Tesco (so dominant, Wal-Mart publicly complain it's impossible to catch them up). Though they've got dozens of micro versions round central London, their only real stores close to the centre are at West Cromwell Rd, W14 and Kennington Lane SE11. Both are sods to get to by tube.

Incidentally, the inaccessibilty of ordinary food shops to tourists is a partial explanation of the endless myths Americans cling to about British prices. We don't come out of branches of Ralph's flabbergasted at how cheap everything is: most of the time - having listened to Americans yabber on so much - we come out faintly puzzled at the trivial differences (as often meaning dearer in America as the other way round) between supermarket prices in California and Berkshire.

We do, however, often come out of a Tesco Metro flabbergasted at how much pricier it seems to be than the ordinary Tesco five miles down the road from our houses.

Flanneruk, this is exactly what I suspected. In San Francisco, where property values are also very high, there are few Albertsons or Safeways except for the very small version. A similar lack of filling stations exist and the people who live in the central area of the city are subject to inflated prices. Gee, sounds like I am parroting your post! So there are great simalarities between the urban areas we live in. Walmarts are only built in outlying areas where development is underway. Much resistance to this phenomenon these days as people begin to wise up to the cutthroat tactics employed by this dominent company. I don't want to fully get into what I really think about the state of affairs where walmart is concerned as that would be better debated on the lounge forum.

If I were in S. Ken. would I have to go far to find a regular grocer? You mentioned Cromwell. We will be at 15 Cromwell Pl. Thanks for the detailed analysis. thereyet

I didn't mention Cromwell, who was an experimenter with a bizarre, monarch-free, system of government we had the sense to get rid of three and a half centuries ago.

I did mention West Cromwell Road W14, which is a long way from any of the half-dozen Cromwell Places scattered all over London. If you mean Cromwell Place, SW7, it's a few hundred yards' painless walk from the Gloucester Rd Waitrose.

Don't get me started on Wal-Mart. I'd be a huge fan of them (they're the only food chain in the US that's really serious about keeping prices to the customer as low as possible, and if he'd been British Sam Walton would have been a national hero as well as getting the Lordship his Tesco and Sainsbury opposite numbers got), except that they turn into incompetent, second-division, pussycats the moment they set foot outside the Americas. They're not even that good at being big: strip out home-market sales and they're way behind Carrefour, Metro and Tesco.

The question is well worded...the answers? Is there a Fodor correspondent in London that can and will check the prices? Great project! 'thereyet', learn the exact prices in your city for your list, post them. English visitors will be interested. Later do the same during your visit to London. Next...sun screen...a report will be out soon saying that sunscreen may cause more cancer than no sunscreen. Sun light is essential in the production of vitamin D. The rosy cheeks of 'Nothlanders' is an evolutionary adaptation that increases sun exposure. One doctor suggests 15 minutes of sun a day to prevent osteoporosis.

I think the original question is answered about as fully as it can be by audere's and my posts. Those are what we would normally expect to see, which is probably more useful than having an exact price that turns out to be an outlier, given that prices vary shop by shop and brand by brand.

I recently bought a very small bottle of water at LHR so I could get some "change" and as things at airports can sometimes be, it cost considerably more than it would have in some neighborhood Sainsbury store.

Thereyet, it might have been more interesting if you had started out by telling people those prices you say you are "used to" and as a matter of fact I would be interested in what those prices are.

Can you elaborate? You might find there is some considerable variance in prices of those things within the country where you live.

OK, fair enough. I live in a simi-rural unincorparated town 16 miles south of Oakland, Ca.

Newspaper (daily)= 50 cents/ 1.00 Sunday
Bottle water=1.00- 1.39 16-32oz
You can get 32 bottle cases at Costco for about $5.00
Cup of reg. coffee at starbucks 1.60/16oz
Cigs (my brand) 5.50/20 pack
Candy bar .75
payphone when you can find one .50 for three min.
sunscreen I don't know my wife shops for that
Small bag of chips .99

Thats all in cents and dollars.
PatrickLondon is right. Audere did answer the OP well.
I burn like a match light bricket and need sunscreen so my wife doesn't have to hear about it later. As always, thereyet

Glad I don't smoke in the States OR UK with those prices. Benson & Hedges Deluxe cigarettes are $15.00 a carton here. I think a carton of 10 packs of Dunhills were about $16.00. Used to be an affordable vice for me.

Thanks, thereyet...those prices seem to be pretty much in line with what I see here in the DC Metro area although the "Post" is only 35 cents out of a machine.

There are a few more "biggie" Tescos in central London, including one across from Liverpool St Stn and near Picadilly. Sainsbury has a large-ish store right across from Holborn tube stn and behind Green Parks. None are "Express", "Metro" rip-off venues, with better product range. Good for stocking up teas/biscuits/marmalade etc as cheap gifts.

In terms of supermarket pecking order, you can get el-cheapo stuff from Iceland (none in central London) or Somerfield (one along Edgeware Rd, close to Sussex Gardens). I'm always fascinated with how different supermarkets appeal to different socio-econoic demographic segments (A/B/C/D/Es).

For incidentals, avoid buying things from news agents and abovementioned Express/Metro superettes. Their pricing strategies are simple: they charge extra for convenience.

As for coffee, regular size latte at Pret A Manger is £1.85. You used to be able to get £1 coffee at Benjy's but they went bankrupt.

Ciggies are really expensive in UK (and the rest of Europe), as tax accounts for 50% or so of the retail price.