The Little Market.

Saturday morning, and my 9 am alarm goes off. Alarm set on a Saturday? This can only mean one thing… either my mother is visiting and she's decided to catch a train before the sun rises again, or free food is on the horizon.

Thanks to my thrifty housemate we had bagged free tickets to 'The Little Market', a free food festival. Where we would enjoy a free meal, free drink, and free tasters amongst browsing the food you could actually purchase. Now, I am having trouble affording to wash my face at the moment, so immediately hopped on this opportunity to fill my scrimping boots and see what The Little Market had to offer.

The oracle of all things cheese.

This wonder emporium of costless delights could be found in the midst of East London, just off Brick Lane. Upon arriving at the market, soggy on exterior but not dampened in spirit thanks to the prospect of a free breakfast, we were greeted by individual stalls specialising in chocolates and cheeses, reims of fairy lights and the area peppered with hay stacks that yummy mummies could allow their toddlers to clamber all over. Making our way to the chocolate stall first, we went to get our nibble on. After a short speech about the amazing quality, intense flavour and pocket pleasing price of the chocolate, I realised that the chocolate was actually the same as what was sold in a popular european supermarket.

Look at those cleverly placed butternuts. 

Still, we moved on, and what is the best way to follow chocolate? With cheese. Hang on though, the same cheese and oatcakes that are from the same supermarket as the chocolate? Suspicious. After closer investigation, everything in the market was indeed from the supermarket we had recognised the chocolate from. The baker selling muffins and croissants at steal prices of 59p, the butcher selling cuts of beef, the delicatessen selling olives and sun-dried tomatoes, all from the same place. We decided to target one of the stalls providing us with our free meal, 'Sandy and Sals', and decided to grill them. After thinking on my feet and asking them an extremely intense series of questions, consisting of 'do you specialise in salads?' and 'is this organic?' I got to the real nitty gritty. Slyly asking where they buy their produce from, they skirted round the question and answered 'everyone in the market gets there produce from the same place', BINGO. 'So you mean (insert name of supermarket)?' I asked, feeling like me my friend were the modern female equivalent to Starsky and Hutch; all we needed were flares. They repeated the same answer as they gave before. I tried once more, same response.

Starsky and Hutch

How does any of this relate to the above definition of 'perception' I put at the beginning I hear you ask? Upon leaving the market, unsure whether to be outraged or impressed by this whole facade, we learnt that they were actually filming for a TV advert, trying to change certain perceptions that have been hanging over the supermarket. We came to realise that this was indeed, genius. When you looked at the clientele walking around, it was extremely different to whom you would stereotypically expect to see walking around the supermarket itself. The one in question is actually known as a 'deep discount' supermarket chain, meaning it's aimed at low income groups. This however sadly means that a lot of people preconceive an image of the quality of goods you would buy from there, thus having a chain reaction on who buys. The reactions of people in the market when they realised that their goods were not from the bakery of the kind faced man passing over their paper carrier bag, but the store behind the logo that was sneakily placed upon it, were of both shock and amazement.

From the reactions of those purchasing, clearly there is a typical view held. It certainly highlights how presumptions can hold us back from trying outside of what we are accustom to. It's a good way to prompt your thinking on how certain presumptions you've made about things have prevented you in some way. However, the store trying to beat this is actually one of the fastest expanding retail companies in Europe. In the 12 weeks to 25th May of this year they saw their highest ever achievement in growth, going up from 3% to 3.6% year on year. Today they have stores that can be found in nearly every country in Europe and there are plans to take this outside of  Europe and build in locations such as Canada, Australia and Mexico. However, does continuous success mean that the perception of it really needs to be changed at all? Was  The Little Market really 'challenging perceptions', or being used as another way for this multi-billion pound company to keep climbing the profit ladder….?

 As for the store itself…. have you guessed it yet?