M&S cuts food prices in supermarket battle

MARKS & SPENCER has slashed prices on almost 500 of its most popular food items as it scrambles to win back customers and arrest its declining sales.

The High Street chain has dramatically cut prices across products such as chocolate eggs and legs of lamb, in time for Easter.

A bottle of Limestone Coast Sauvignon now costs £7 compared with £10 a year ago, with a family pack of salmon fillets reduced from £13 to £11. It is also selling 20pc more Easter eggs for £5 and under compared to last year.

Head of food Stuart Machin said M&S is trying to be ‘special and relevant, with prices to shout about’.

It is the latest move by chief executive Steve Rowe and chairman Archie Norman to revive fortunes by attracting more families.

M&S’s food business, which has long been the jewel in its crown, has struggled in recent years as shoppers are lured by bargains at German rivals Aldi and Lidl.

The price cuts mean that the cost of an Easter lunch for eight people at M&S is now £3.03 lower than a year earlier, at £34.18, making it cheaper than Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. Good Housekeeping magazine, which carried out the price comparisons of Easter lunches across 10 supermarkets, called the reductions ‘a deliberate price-cutting move’.

Machin said: ‘We’re in the early stages of our transformation plan to broaden the appeal of our food to family-age customers and make M&S more relevant, more often.

‘You can see this shift in our marketing campaign. M&S is no longer positioning itself as special and different but special and relevant, with prices to shout about.’

The wide-ranging reductions are part of a drastic overhaul of the food division.

It has bagged a £1.5bn deal with Ocado to launch an online grocery delivery service for the first time, and the retailer is planning to open larger M&S Food supermarkets to attract more families.

Critics believe it is paying too much for the tie-up, which spells the end for Ocado’s 19-year partnership with Waitrose. Some Ocado customers have already threatened to leave, complaining that M&S is more expensive than Waitrose.

Norman brought in former protege Machin last year to revive the struggling food business. The pair worked together at Asda and Australian supermarket Target, where Norman is still chairman.

In an effort to make the upmarket grocer more accessible, Machin has plastered food prices on M&S’s advertisements for the first time and struck a sponsorship deal with the family television show Britain’s Got Talent.

He recently revived its famous ‘This is not just food, this is M& S Food’ advertising campaign, 12 years after it was first launched.

And he has also increased portion sizes, bringing in familysize shepherd’s pies and pizzas.

It is understood that Machin wants to increase M& S’s food sales by a third over the coming years.