BEST POSSIBLE TASTE

After years of growth at discounters Aldi and Lidl dominating the news, M&S’s startling sales figures prove it has found a way to tempt shoppers back to its food aisles – and can probably teach the likes of Asda a thing or two.

Food sales increased at M&S by 10.5 per cent over the last quarter, with the like-for-like sales figure, which adjusts for any new stores, up 9.9 per cent. Even allowing for extra shoppers over Christmas, this makes M&S the top-performing grocer in terms of volume growth, with a rise of about 7 per cent.

Why are shoppers heading back? The second series of ITV’s Inside M&S documentary, with its cheery hard-working staffers, can’t have hurt. But there’s something more profound going on.

One thing M&S does have in common with those pesky discounters is less choice. Not quite as sparse as Lidl – where the full range sits at around 2,300 items, while the largest M&S Food Hall will carry around 7,000 – but less than half of Waitrose’s, and a fraction of the number in an out-of-town Tesco and Sainsbury’s. Could it be that we are fed up with being offered 20 different kinds of tinned tomatoes, and that a choice from half a dozen is less stressful?

Although M&S caved in and started stocking a few other brands 14 years ago (yup, there’s nothing like actual Marmite), its traditional suspicion of any item that doesn’t carry the M&S logo is finally paying off. We are ditching branded goods and turning to own-label products in our droves.

If, with its fancy reputation, switching to M&S doesn’t feel like trading down, you’d be dead right. M&S, with products that rank top in almost a third of my taste tests, offers consistently high quality, and the prices are keen.

All of this is part of a drive to win us round to doing our big trolley shop at M&S, rather than popping in for just a few top-up items. The company has been investing heavily in out-of-town stores, placing them close to – and in direct competition with – the likes of Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

But while it might be taking tips from the other supermarkets, it is keeping its point of difference. Not everything is cheaper but, by and large, where the price is higher, it’s for a reason. Where other retailers copy brands slavishly, M&S still throws the odd curve ball. Take its slender, oblong Jaffa cakes, a thing of elegance and beauty and quite different to McVities. Sure, they cost a few pence more, but they’re the kind of thing you’d serve up without blinking an eye if Queen Camilla dropped in for tea and gossip.

CHRISTMAS PARTY FOOD M&S had its biggest-ever party food season this Christmas – bagging over 40 per cent of our spending in this sector. More than half a million pigs in blankets flew out of the store, along with 405,000 chicken Kyivs and 290,000 Best Ever prawn toasts.

FESTIVE TREATS WITH A FUTURE

M&S ditched free plastic bags in 2008, and now its packaging you’ll want to keep and reuse has scored a hit. Marks sold 725,000 Snowy Night Projector Tins (bearing choc-chip shortbread and gingerbread) and 723,000 Shortbread Light Up Tins. Once their contents have been consumed, the vessels can be rolled out again and again.

THE BASICS

With more out-of-town shops, like the massive Colney branch with a 28,000 sq ft Food Hall, and carefully placed stores like Matlock in Derbyshire’s palatial food-only store, customers are switching to M&S for the big shop. The “Remarksable” range had its biggest year ever with sales up 18 per cent; six packs of eggs were up 77 per cent, while we bought more staples like loose bananas and milk, too.

TURKEYS

Meat and poultry in general were big growth areas for M&S in 2023, with 2.4 turkeys sold every second ahead of Christmas, and the big winner for an easy life was the Collection British Oakham slow-cooked turkey with stuffing, bacon and turkey gravy, with 195,000 of us putting it on our tables.

LOW-AND-NO ALCOHOL Whether we’re all making a choice to be healthier or designated drivers are tired of being stuck with Coke, low-and-no alcohol drinks have been the hit of the season. M&S was no exception, seeing its biggest-ever week of alcohol-free sales in the days leading up to Christmas, in which it sold more than 115,000 bottles and cans.

GUT-FRIENDLY GOODS Ever keen to stay on trend, last week M&S launched a fruitflavoured gut shot developed with nutrition science company Zoe. Think Yakult, but with added credibility from Zoe founder Prof Tim Spector. It’s sold over 127,000 bottles so far, and on January 8 the shot outsold the store’s bestselling 500ml bottles of water. It’s not just any microbiome boost, it’s an M&S microbiome boost.