Supermarket Wars in Jerusalem

Until the beginning of the summer there were five main shopping choices for people in my neighbourhood.

1. The Shuk. The open air market downtown. Very cheap but bustling and noisy, no parking and a bus ride away (if you can be bothered to bring all your weekly shopping home on the bus!) There are those who make it a virtue to go to the shuk but most of my friends are not shuk people.

2. Super Deal. Mid-mountain where I live and just oh so conveniently around the corner from me. Unfortunately it's very expensive and quite small.

3. Rami Levy. The cheapest option, along the mid-mountain road a little further away. Imagine a shop the size of your local sweet shop/newagent being stuffed full of everything in Lidl and 200 people trying to get round it with shopping trolleys. I went there once and still have flash-backs.

4. Shufersal. In the valley. A bit like Lidl. Looks like an aircraft hangar but good fruit and veg and cheapish.

5. Mega Bool. In the valley opposite Shufersal and under a nice shopping mall. Mega Bool started off cheap but then got more expensive. However by that time I'd already got the credit card and it was pleasant to walk through the mall to get there and it was the closest thing to Sainsbury's in the area. In short I felt at home in Mega Bool and so did my friends.

[FYI: 1nis is about 18p, 6nis = 1 pound]

Then Mega Bool closed. It was a slow death lasting several weeks while they were open but didn't restock. Pitiful actually. It was painful to watch and one by one we stayed away and cancelled our loyalty cards. But where to go?

I was in denial for a couple of months and popped into Super Deal every couple of days while I made my mind up. I spent 2,000nis/month for the two of us instead of the usual 1,250. Rami Levy would have been about half that for the same food and household goods but I just couldn't. The only choice for me was Shufersal in the aircraft hangar. I met some of the old crowd there and was slowly getting used to it.

And then, big news! Osher Ad opened yesterday where Mega Bool had been. Osher Ad is a bit like Costco except they are not catering primarily to businesses but provide bulk buying opportunities for large religious families with lots of children and not very much money.

I asked for impressions on fb in Secret Jerusalem and got over 200 comments. It's been hilarious. I had people walking round doing live updates. They wouldn't allow photos to be taken as apparently there were spies there from Rami Levy. It was open till midnight, all 24 checkouts working, cheaper than cheap prices, no delivery service unfortunately. The lifts from the shopping mall aren't working yet so if you're not driving you have to walk all the way round. And it doesn't open until 10am which is very inconvenient for parents who drop their kids off at school for 8am - what are you supposed to do for 2 hours while you wait?

I went today. On my way I popped into Shufersal to compare a few prices. Tomatoes had dropped from 3.90nis/kg to 0.90nis/kg and cucumbers were also down to 1.45nis/kg from 3.90. So I guess Shuferal also sent spies yesterday. I reckoned it would be pretty cheap to shop at Shufersal today so I decided to do a quick reccy in Osher Ad and come back to Shufersal. I already had it in my mind that there would be an oppressively religious atmosphere in Osher Ad and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I arrived at 9.57am. Think of the start of a marathon except with shopping trolleys. Think of passport control at the airport in August. Everyone was in a jolly and expectant mood. There were people in strappy tops with bare shoulders, there were Arabs, and there were the orthodox Jews - the usual mixture of clientele for my neighbourhood. No religious coercion here (in some places supermarkets have been known to have dress codes for women).

It's huge. A bit like Costco and Tesco's rolled into one. I'd gone 20 paces when I realised I had to shop here today. Even though the tomatoes and cucumbers were 1.90nis/kg, everything else was a bargain. I bought the 3.2kg block of cheese but will cut it into 6 portions and freeze 5 of them. I bought 2.5kg of hair conditioner for 14nis which I'll decant into 750l water bottles. Sweets for Shabbat were 1nis per packet that usually cost between 5 and 8nis elsewhere. Crisps at 2nis/50g packet. Bread, rolls and pittot at reduced prices. A big box of chocolate croissants for 8.90nis will be quartered and frozen. I bought 1kg of carrots for 1nis. LOL, I don't even like carrots but at that price it would have been rude not to. And the list goes on.

Of course I spent twice what I would usually spend for one week but at least half of it is part of a bulk buy that will last a month. The cashiers didn't know how to work the tills but they'll learn. Unfortunately I had to schlep it all up the mountain in 30 degree heat. I broke my shopping trolley as it was all too heavy for it. So that's about 60nis for a new one of those. But then the cleaner who'd just finished the stairwell in my building offered to carry it all upstairs for me. All in all, I think I will be going there again. And again. And again. Until, as the cynics have pointed out, the prices start to creep up as they do once they've got you chained to their loyalty card.