Autumn's Supermarket Secrets Supermarket Secrets

We've become a nation of supermarket shoppers.

We buy a staggering 90% of our food from supermarkets.

Not everyone's a supermarket fan, but we do rely on them

to give us the food that we want, when we want it.

Now that is a huge challenge

and I want to find out how the supermarkets do it.

Whoa!

I'm going behind the scenes with Britain's biggest food retailers.

This may be the nuttiest thing I've ever seen.

I've got exclusive access,

to discover how they source...

Let's grill one

..how they make....

No! Slow it down, please.

..and how they move our food,

on an epic scale.

It's a massive operation.

It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I'm tracking it season by season.

And this time, how the supermarkets get us in the mood for autumn.

I'll see what it takes to deliver a monster Halloween.

Got 1.8 million to go out the door,

just over 500 full lorry-loads.

Find out about a revolution in British apples.

How is a small boy supposed to climb that?

I don't think you've thought this through, have you?

I discover the truth about supermarket own-label pies.

Are they all made in the same place?

Ah!

And I'm let into a hidden supermarket world.

It's like a supermarket but without...

Well, it's got none of the frills.

It's got no special offer banners. We've got no customers.

Supermarkets have a huge influence over our everyday lives,

but exactly how they bring us our food has been hidden

until now.

Aye aye!

That is a winner.

I love autumn,

and for many of us it's got to be the best time of the year.

There's a bit of a nip in the air, you want to stay cosy,

maybe kick the leaves up in the park.

Autumn's the season when we want comfort food, and warming up.

And the supermarkets and their suppliers have a race

on their hands to bring us what we want.

Harvest time makes it one of the busiest periods

in the supermarket calendar.

The supermarkets can use autumn as a chance to make a big deal

about home-grown produce, especially the new crop of British apples.

The supermarkets know that we want to buy British.

In fact, a recent survey has shown that almost six out of ten of us

would buy British apples if we could, and you know,

when so many of us want something, the supermarkets will listen.

They want to bring us more British. Trouble is,

only about a third of our apples are home grown.

Since the 1970s, the supermarkets have piled the shelves

with cheaper, sweeter foreign apples.

Nowadays over a quarter of the apples we buy are one variety -

Gala, originally from New Zealand.

I started my working life in the food business as a greengrocer,

nearly 30 years ago,

so I've lived through big changes in the British apple industry.

Do you know that in the last 25 years

we've lost about half of our British orchards?

Well, as a greengrocer that absolutely breaks my heart.

During that time the British apple industry's been in serious decline

and we have all developed a taste for foreign imports.

But the tide is turning.

The UK's apple growers began to fight back about 15 years ago.

We started to buy British again

and the supermarkets now want as many home grown apples

as they can get their hands on.

Theresa Huxley, apple technologist for Sainsbury's,

is out meeting her growers.

The size is a bit smaller, isn't it, than last year?

She's checking they're on track with her long-term mission -

to double the number of British apples she sells.

It's a bit shy, though.

They're just right for lunch boxes so let's have a taste.

Are you sure? Yeah, we've got to have a taste.

Mmm, they're eating really well.

Do you want try cos we're so friendly? Go on, then.

Theresa's big idea to make British apple farmers more competitive

is to encourage them to use a revolutionary new growing system,

and produce our favourite Galas in the UK.

She's brought me to an experimental orchard

set up by Sainsbury's in Kent.

This is the weirdest looking bunch of apples I've ever seen.

They've still got traditional bushy apple trees in this orchard.

When you see them beside these tall and skinny new-style trees,

there's a striking difference.

They're actually a, a system called table top.

So what we've got is we've got, is we've got branches,

which come out like a table.

You've got one, two, three, four.

And then we have a tall column of the fruit.

I mean, how do you...

I mean, I don't even know where you would start,

taking an apple tree and making it look like a funny one like this.

We're managing them very carefully.

We're actually quiet brutal, probably, you would say,

when we're pruning them and, actually,

we're only leaving four or five branches around here.

But how is a small boy supposed to climb that?

I don't think you've thought this through, have you?

Removing lots of branches transforms much more

than just the look of the trees.

Theresa gets more fruit because the apples get more sunlight,

which helps them grow.

This suits foreign varieties like the Gala

which prefer sunny conditions.

And she can fit more trees into a plot of land.

The result is up to three times more apples,

than from a traditional orchard.

The secret is to allow the light onto every single branch

so that every fruit

has sufficient light.

Think of it like a sun-bed - you want maximum exposure to the light.

Look how evenly-sized the fruit is.

That just doesn't happen. Why is that important?

Who cares whether you get a small one and a big one?

You supermarket people, you're not like us normal people.

We don't think quality is all to do with shape and size, and colour.

You like uniformity, that's what you.....

Well, I'm focused on taste.

I'm absolutely focused on taste, because...

But you just said colour and size, was the most important...

Yeah, but colour is directly linked to taste.

If you can get colouration, then you've got more sugars

and that will actually enhance the flavour.

Sainsbury's first trialled this system here in 2006

and more and more of their growers are using it.

Now half of their British-grown apples

are produced using this method.

In 20 years' time, is every orchard going to look like this?

I would suspect so.

We're trying to substitute imported apples

for local British-grown apples.

Is that true? It certainly is.

Come here.

SHE LAUGHS

There's a lot of hard work gone into this. It's treating the tree

as if it was a sort of high-performance machine.

It's making sure that it grows so it gets the most sunlight,

it's feeding it just the right amount of water,

just the right amount of nutrients, to get the most fruit that you can

from every scrap of land. It is very clever.

Theresa's here today to check if these apples are ready to harvest.

And she's got an ingenious test to help her decide.

This is an iodine solution.

We cover the flesh in iodine

and the starch will turn black.

Unripe apples contain a lot of starch.

As apples ripen, the starch is turned into sweet-tasting sugar.

Sugar doesn't stain black when put in iodine.

The Gala that you picked has got far too much starch.

That's right. It's not mature enough yet.

That's right, it won't taste good.

Gotcha.

What we're looking for is a balance between starch and sugar

so we're looking more for this sort of colouration.

The half-and-half colour shows the starch level is dropping,

and the apple is getting sweeter.

Can I taste one?

You can taste one. They're ready for harvest.

That's really sharp.

I didn't say they were ready to eat.

I said they were ready to harvest. There's a difference.

Nice.

The longer we wish to store the fruit,

the more starch we need in the fruit.

It's ready to harvest,

but it's going to sit in storage for a while.

That's right, until it's really

got the fantastic eating quality that you would expect.

Theresa's happy that this lot of apples are ready for picking.

Every apple you must check about size.

One apple and take.

We put very gently and put in the bag.

You watch me. OK.

You watch me.

Yeah.

Very good.

THEY CLAP

When I buy apples in the shop,

I just put them at the bottom of the bag, cos I....

Oh, please don't do that.

Don't do that, because you must remember they're...

Treat them like eggs, that's my advice.

What, boil them for three minutes?

No!

Theresa's mission to sell more British apples

doesn't just rely on how many are grown.

She needs to keep the shelves filled with them as long as possible.

As a shopper you kind of think, when the fruit's been grown,

that's when the hard work finishes.

No, no.

No? No. It's just starting.

Later, I'll find out exactly how Theresa can supply us

with these apples, months after harvest.

Autumn sees a shift in our shopping lists.

It's a time when we turn to comfort foods.

And one of our favourites is savoury pies.

The autumn pie-eating peak can see sales surge by 50%.

Our top three pies haven't changed in recent years.

It's chicken and mushroom, steak and kidney,

and our favourite

is steak pie.

But what has changed is that the supermarkets

are increasingly grabbing a piece of the pie for themselves.

Own-label pies are becoming more and more popular.

In fact, own-label products in general are booming,

up about a quarter in the last decade.

I've come to Wigan in the north-west of England,

the self-proclaimed home of pies.

After the recent horse-meat scandal,

we're all more interested in what's in our meat products.

Do you buy pies?

I want to find out the difference between a brand

and an own-label pie.

What do people here think?

What I've got here, is I've got a branded product,

and I've got a supermarket own-label.

So, which one would you choose to eat?

I'd probably go for the branded.

That one, the branded one.

Why?

Because it looks better than that.

You just assume it's got better stuff inside.

The branded one would be better quality.

The branded one. A supermarket pie could be made by anybody.

This lot seem a bit sniffy about own-label pies,

but around 70% of pies and pasties sold in Britain

are own-label.

Are they all made in the same place?

Ah!

And then just stick a label on.

Is that what you think? Yeah.

Well, she's right.

Many own-label pies are made in the same factory as branded ones,

but are they the same thing?

I'm here at a factory where they make their brand,

and the supermarket's own-label

and they are going to let me in

to a few of the secrets of the differences between the two.

You must be Neil.

Hi, Gregg, nice to meet you, welcome to Pooles.

Neil Court-Johnston is the head pie man

here at Wigan-based Pooles Pies.

So we'll make on this line, 5,000 of these every hour.

Here, they're up to their eyes in pies.

We make tens of millions of pies, whether it's a deep, a shallow,

whether it's a square, a rectangle, we make them all here,

so we make them for supermarkets in this country.

We make them for supermarkets overseas.

90% are own-label.

That's massive.

Supermarkets' own brand is now 90% of your business?

It's an enormous number of pies.

This firm's been going for over a 150 years

and these days things are buzzing.

They also make fruit crumbles and pasties,

but their main business is meat pies.

In autumn, they make about 25 million of them.

Is autumn a busy time for you?

It's the busiest time of the year, Gregg.

Soon as the football season starts, we sell a lot of pies.

82 pie kiosks at Old Trafford.

A 28-tonne vehicle will take the pies on a Friday.

They'll all be eaten.

At Man United on a match day they are eating nearly 30 tonnes of pies?

They are. And that's just Wayne Rooney.

Is the branded and the supermarket own label...

They're exactly the same pies in a different colour box, aren't they?

It isn't Gregg, no. There's a big difference between them.

It's all about the ingredients in the pie.

The supermarket will approach us

and they'll know the product that they want for their customers.

Same machine. Clear down, reboot it with different ingredients.

That's it.

If the recipe wanted it,

would you consider making a pie without a horse?

Nay, lad.

Neil's been getting that joke for months.

But his products have been tested and given a clean bill of health.

To see how the ingredients can vary from Neil's branded products

to the ones he makes for supermarkets,

we're off to the test kitchen.

The woman with her finger in all the pies

is product developer Maria Yuste.

Hello, Maria. Hi, Gregg, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

What's the difference between your brand

and an own-label supermarket product?

On a branded product we've a lot more freedom

in all aspects of what the pie is.

With a supermarket product you're making that product

to the supermarket's price point.

So they've already worked out a price,

and then they say, "Can you make it?"

That's right, yes.

A retailer might say, "We want something hot and spicy

"and Mediterranean for a pound."

We take that challenge, put it into a pie.

Neil chooses to charge around 20% more for his branded pies

than the standard-range ones he produces for supermarkets.

Well, here we have a selection of ingredients that go into pies.

Maria's going to show how they can adjust the ingredients

to meet supermarket specifications.

In a supermarket pie, you may have to use

something like a margarine or a vegetable-based oil,

where in a branded product you can go to all-butter.

Onions, you might use something like frozen onions,

which are cheaper than fresh onion.

The amount of meat going into a branded product can be higher.

We always start with the dearest of the ingredients

which is normally the proteins so whether it's a meat or a chicken,

and we'll start to tweak recipes but literally just tweak them back

until we hit the price point.

But supermarkets do carry a range of own-label pies

at different price points.

In the 1990s they started to do three tiers,

basic, standard and premium,

so they could compete at the low and high end of the market.

Here we've got Damien and David, two master butchers.

Do cows get nervous when you walk past the field?

Neil makes all the different ranges here.

So, basically, three tiers of supermarket own-label.

Three main tiers, value, mid-range

and premium.

What would I expect to find in the economy?

Economy, you're likely to find trim, and trim is product

that is trimmed off premium cuts of meat,

a bit more fatty.

And the more fat, the cheaper it is?

Correct.

So top, top range, I'm basically biting into a pastry sirloin steak.

Bottom range, it's getting a little bit more gristly.

That's right. So for a pie, what cut of the beast is the best?

A chuck roll and a brisket are your best cuts for a good pie.

And that's kind of like the front shoulder

that doesn't do as much work as a back leg.

That's correct.

The meat in premium own labels will usually be from British animals

reared in high welfare conditions.

But economy fillings might contain cheaper imported meat.

The economy can come from as far and wide as South America,

Argentina, Brazil.

Still very high technical standards,

but mass-produced beef as opposed to welfare.

Basically, the more expensive the pie,

the more meat and the better quality the meat.

That's exactly right.

Right.

Over 50% of the food we buy in supermarkets

is now own-label.

So it's been fascinating to get an insight into this world.

I've always wondered whether the supermarket own label

comes out of exactly the same factory as the branded products.

Well, in this case, they do.

But what is interesting with these pies is they're not the same pies.

The supermarkets have got their own specific recipe

to a very strict criteria.

Same factory, different pies.

Still to come,

a new chicken bred to suit British tastes...

You are playing high-stakes chicken poker.

Yes, we are, yeah.

..and a new breed of supermarket.

Place it in the basket.

Oi, it's gone, where's it gone?

Supermarkets spend a lot of time studying

how we actually use their stores.

They know that where they put their products

has a big effect on what we buy.

Have you noticed that every supermarket

puts fresh fruit and veg in the entrance?

Now, wouldn't it make more practical sense to put the fragile stuff

at the end of the shop where it won't get crushed

under the rest of your shopping?

But there's a reason behind everything in the supermarket world.

Nick Grey is a retail specialist,

who advises supermarkets on the best way to lay out their stores.

Why is the fruit and veg always at the front?

Generally there's more space around the fruit and veg section,

so it helps you sort of, decompress, if you like,

and orientate yourself from that horrible drive to the supermarket.

So this is a really good example.

Most people do this in a fruit and veg section.

They will abandon their trolley and they go and navigate round

and pick up a few things and put it back.

So that means that the aisle width in this type,

this section of the store,

needs to be wide to accommodate that.

So you don't come along and walk up behind and think,

"Where's that lady gone?"

Research shows we only visit about a quarter of the store.

But most of us will pass through the main central aisle.

It accounts for a huge portion of store sales.

What you find in all stores is this, which is a gondola end.

Gondola... Gondola end?

Gondola end, yeah, and, obviously, you can see loads of them.

These gondola ends represent 40% of supermarket sales.

You're familiar with the bargains being at the ends

cos that's generally where they always are.

And the other point, of course, is you're exposed to the ends.

Pretty much all of them.

So if you're navigating across the store,

you will walk past lots of the gondola ends.

I mean, a common complaint is that you keep moving things around.

When I go in the supermarket, I go up to the staff and say,

"Where have you hidden this?

"Could you tell me where you've hidden that?"

Often, things are moved around,

but they're moved around for the right reasons.

The thing that will have gone

is something that is now not in so much demand.

They're not doing it to annoy us.

Ultimately, that's the worst thing that a supermarket can do.

They would hate to think they're annoying you. Yeah.

The chilled section in British supermarkets is really important.

It's much bigger than you see abroad,

mainly down to our taste for ready meals.

In the UK, we buy one in every three ready meals sold in Europe.

But this area can pose problems for supermarkets.

You tend to want to sort of get out of the chilled section, quickly.

You don't want to be cold. You basically don't want to be cold.

Suddenly I'm warm and it's because above us,

these hot air vents blowing down on us to make the aisle warmer.

Well that's... I love that. That's nice and warm.

The freezer aisle can vary in position in different stores

but people tend to visit here last, to try and limit defrosting.

This is perhaps the most challenging aisle for the stores.

Why don't I like the freezer section

as much as I like a biscuit section or a fresh fruit and veg section?

It's a bit less engaging and it's a bit harder to shop

because they're these physical cabinets

that you've got to engage with.

You've got put your hand into a cold thing

and pick up something that's cold.

It's very difficult to see what you're looking for.

So you'll notice, looking down this aisle,

that everything is signposted to make it as easy for you

to find what you're looking for as possible.

Are the supermarkets desperately trying to make us

feel good in the store?

Yes, they spend a lot of time and money understanding what we need,

and then they provide it for us.

So these guys not only buy decent bananas,

they're also fantastic psychologists.

Er, yeah. Yeah, they are pretty good.

So the layout of our supermarkets has been carefully worked out

to make our shopping as pain-free as possible and to keep us spending.

SPOOKY MUSIC

October 31st has become a monster event.

The amount we fork out on Halloween in the supermarkets

has gone up from ?10 million a decade ago,

to ?280 million last year.

And there's one product right at the heart of it

that the supermarkets have got to get right.

Pumpkins!

Show 'em your fangs.

Show your fangs.

That one is an absolute whopper.

They might be a bit of fun to you and me,

but for the supermarkets these are serious business.

This is Pumpkin Central.

Field after field of weird orange orbs.

There's a good chance your Halloween lantern was grown here,

Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.

But we all want them for one day only.

It's the biggest fruit and veg sale spike of the year.

So how do you get millions of pumpkins ready to hit it?

Natasha Beigly is the pumpkin buyer for Tesco.

She's got a scary job...

To get pumpkins to nearly 2,500 stores

all around Britain on time.

And she's a rookie at this.

For me, obviously first year in pumpkins, I'm calm...

I'm saying that on October 5th.

I'm calm, I'm looking forward to it.

However, you know, obviously you're buying

high volumes of pumpkins in a really short space of time.

Anything can go wrong at any minute, in terms of ensuring the pumpkins

are ready, they're the right spec, they're the right size, colour.

How they're going to get to store, what store wants what,

your promotional plan, you know, how you're really going to drive

pumpkins and make the event bigger every year.

Three weeks before Halloween, Natasha is here for a regular

meeting with her main pumpkin grower, Steve Whitworth,

to check her order of 1.8 million pumpkins.

We're averaging about 3,000...

3,500 an acre, over everything that we're doing.

15 fields this size, to do nearly two million pumpkins...

That's a lot of work you've got in three weeks.

That's a lot of pumpkins.

A lot of pumpkins, and a lot of lorry loads to go out.

Natasha and Steve have been worried for weeks about something

distinctly off colour with this year's pumpkins.

They're not all orange.

Obviously, natural concern is that,

would my customers want green pumpkins?

Ideally, you want every pumpkin to go orange in the field,

and, in a good summer, that is what happens.

We'd be standing here, seeing this field,

and it'd just be a sea of orange.

This could spell disaster. Nobody wants a green pumpkin.

The green comes from chlorophyll,

the stuff plants use to soak up energy from the sun.

This actually masks an orange pigment produced by pumpkins -

the same one you get in carrots.

As pumpkins ripen, the chlorophyll disappears

and lets the orange colour show through.

Warmth speeds up the ripening process.

But the weather hasn't been warm enough for the pumpkins

to ripen and change colour.

So, how do you hurry along nearly two million of them

that don't know Halloween's on its way?

How many pumpkins are in here, Steve?

There's just over 600,000.

Steve has made them go orange quicker

in a temperature-controlled glasshouse.

The weather, obviously with the way it's been,

everything's a little bit cold, so we're bringing them all under cover,

and adding some heat to them, and then that's making, as you can

see, everything then turns orange the longer it's in here.

It's a precise business.

Too humid, and they'd rot.

Too cold, they won't ripen.

So, he has to keep them at a steady temperature

between seven and nine degrees.

This pumpkin is perfect for my customers.

Natasha knows big orange pumpkins sell best,

so she's relieved they're on track.

But she now has a huge logistical operation on her hands.

I'll catch up with her later to see if she can get almost

two million pumpkins to the right place at the right time.

In autumn, the days are chillier and shorter.

Our thoughts turn to roast dinners.

Chicken is our runaway favourite meat.

We buy nearly twice as much of it compared to its next rival, beef.

Britain's poultry producers, like this one in Norfolk,

are busier than ever at this time of year.

Come the autumn, as the weather starts to get colder,

it's not unusual for supermarkets to see

a 15% or 20% increase in the demand for whole birds.

And it's birds like these that are actually going to supply

the increased demand.

So, leg or breast, sir?

We get through the equivalent of about 900 million chickens a year.

And there might look like there's a lot of variety on sale,

but under the wrapper, something surprising's going on.

Amazingly, even though we consume hundreds of millions

of chickens, most of what we eat comes from just four breeds.

Just four.

The commercial poultry business uses two main breeds of standard chicken

and two slow-growing ones, mainly used for free-range and organic.

They have catchy names like the Ross 308

and the Cobb Saso 150...

the products of years of research by breeding companies.

Sainsbury's reckon it's now time for a new British bird.

But it's a risky business trying to persuade us

to change our chicken choices.

Judith Bachelor has the job of bringing a new chicken

to the shelves that she hopes will ruffle a few feathers.

She's in charge of all the own-brand products at Sainsbury's.

I'm taking you to something very exciting, actually,

basically to show you something that is a world first.

Ooh!

I'm intrigued.

We're in Cambridgeshire to meet chicken farmer Mark Galton,

and to see a very unusual flock of birds.

This is a brand-new breed of chicken that

we've been working on for the last three years.

Obviously, it's black feathered, which is completely the

opposite to the rest of the chickens available in today's market.

Chickens reared for meat usually have white feathers

or sometimes brown.

This black-feathered breed will be a total newcomer

to our supermarket shelves.

Mark got the idea from a type of turkey he was already supplying.

We've been growing Norfolk Black turkey for a long time

and supplying it into Sainsbury's, and we've seen that business grow.

So much to say, really, that the Norfolk Black turkey is

one of the accepted birds, you know, top-quality birds for Christmas.

So, we thought, wouldn't that be good

if we could have a Norfolk Black chicken?

Can I get up close to the chickens?

Can I have a look? Yeah, let's go and have a look.

Has anyone ever been savagely mauled by a gang of chickens?

So, it's a black chicken, which is different,

but you don't sell it with the feathers on anyway, do you?

But, if you notice, they've all got black legs,

and that will make them stand apart from anything else on the shelf.

And you want people to easily recognise it on the shelf.

Yeah.

But Judith wasn't immediately won over

when Mark first pitched the idea.

She had a problem with a black-feathered breed he showed her.

It was a French bird, and it just wasn't a shape

that we knew our customers would like.

So, it had very skinny breasts, very long legs.

Its legs were too long and it was too skinny?

Yes. You should have stuck a Chanel dress on it.

SHE LAUGHS

The supermarkets can be demanding customers.

Mark was told that, to win an order, he had to come up with

a breed of black-feathered chicken that suited British tastes.

The trouble was, it didn't exist.

It took three painstaking years of chicken matchmaking

to come up with the new breed -

crossing black-feathered females with stockier males.

We've got some chickens here to look at.

This is the original French bird, and you can see how

it's got a narrow and a long breast,

so there's not a huge amount of breast meat on that chicken.

What does the British customer want, then?

Well, the British customer wants something

that has plumper breasts and smaller legs.

This is the original skinny French bird.

Yes. This is a standard fat-breasted British bird. Yes.

And there is a striking difference between them.

So, our challenge to Mark was, can you find us a halfway house

between the two?

It's quite clear to see there's not the huge quantity of

breast meat that this bird has got,

but there's certainly more than there is in this one.

Your Norfolk Black has got the same elongated shape as the French,

but it gets fatter round the bum.

Yes, that's right.

It's not just with the look of the chickens that Judith

set very strict criteria.

She wanted it to have a strong taste, as well.

Come on, then. Let's get one and kill it.

The flavour of chicken depends on the breed, what they eat,

and also their age.

A free, ordinary free-range bird would be about 56 days,

and we're growing these to a minimum of 63,

because that gives us this added flavour.

So, it's going a bit longer than your average free-range chicken,

and you reckon you've got the... The balance right.

Any further than that, and we'd start tasting like grouse.

The brand-new breed of chicken is about to fly the nest

and find its place on our supermarket shelves.

If they sell well, it'll be a huge boost to Mark's business,

but the project is a big investment.

It's cost Mark over ?100,000 so far.

Ha! Look at that.

Ah! About 12,000 chickens in here.

Not one single chicken has got off a shelf yet?

No. That's a leap of faith.

I haven't had a penny back yet.

That is a leap of faith.

It represents a massive, massive investment.

If this doesn't work, could this actually break the business?

If it didn't work, yes,

it would have big repercussions for the business.

You are playing high-stakes chicken poker.

Yes, we are, yes.

How do you feel, honestly? Are you scared?

I'm not scared.

I am quite emotional about it, though, actually,

because, when you see it like this, and you think all of the hard

work that's gone into it, and, you know, it's a big deal.

That's a big undertaking...

I am emotional about it, yeah.

It is emotional, yeah. Why so much emotion?

It's a lot of hard work, isn't it?

And you're a little business. Yeah.

Yeah.

There is a lot of responsibility on your feathered shoulders.

Mark and Judith are gearing up for launch day.

New chicks are hatching every week,

so they'll have three months' supply waiting in the wings.

This is a massive project. There's no doubt about that.

There's over 100,000 of those chickens in the pipeline,

and they haven't sold one of them yet.

I didn't realise how much work it takes to put a chicken on a shelf.

And it obviously means so much to Judith.

She seems pretty confident that they'll sell.

So, later, I'll see these chickens launched in store, and find out

whether the carefully bred bird will take off and appeal to our tastes.

It's not just new products the supermarkets are trying out...

This is a branch of Tesco in Enfield, London.

It's no ordinary store.

It's one of a new breed of supermarket.

Look at this place.

It is as big as an out-of-town superstore.

But you'll notice there's no screaming kids

and there's no trolley rage.

And as I walk up and down these aisles,

it looks to me like a normal supermarket.

But there are no checkouts

and no shopper will ever push their trolley across this threshold.

It's actually a dedicated online store.

We now spend around ?6 billion a year

on online grocery shopping,

so most of the big supermarkets are starting to open these.

Paul Smith is Deputy Manager here.

What exactly is going on here, Paul?

So, Gregg, we're in a Tesco store,

which we refer to as a dot-com-only store.

It's purpose built to take the demand of dot-com

out of the existing supermarkets.

But, you know what, it's like a supermarket

but without... Well, it's got none of the frills, it's got no sort of

end-of-aisle showcasing, it's got no special-offer banners...

Well, we've got no customers. It's purpose built for staff only.

Most online orders are still sorted in normal supermarkets,

but, since 2006, the supermarkets have been

opening these in their busiest areas.

Tesco have five of them around the country.

So, the guys I can see running round,

are making up the dot-com orders, right?

That's correct, yeah. Is it possible I could have a go?

Of course you can. Really? Yeah. Is it tricky?

No, no, we'll get you started.

Just come over here and I'll put one of our watches on.

It'll go over the jumper.

This part with the screen tells us exactly where to go

and what to pick.

This bit here that you've got connected on your finger...

It's a scanner. Scanner. Does it time me, as well?

It does, it gives you a rough guide to pick at about 200 items per hour.

200 items an hour?!

It sounds worse than it actually is.

It's only one product every 40 seconds.

Come and give it a go. You'll see how easy it is.

So, if you can scan that zone there... That's it.

Mod 26, shelf C, 1...

So, 26... Shelf C...

Hang on, hang on, where's this say 26?

Oh, 26...

Oh, 26! Mod 26.

Mod. Mod?

A module, which is what...

A module. Module 26...

Yeah. C... Yeah...

Shelf C. 1... Product 1.

That's it.

So, if you place it in the basket...

It's gone! Wahey! Where's it gone?

That tray's gone off to another location within the shop

to have products picked by our team...

So, I'm not making an individual householder,

I'm helping to make loads of different orders. That's correct

I don't have to trek around doing one person's shopping here,

I just put products from this aisle into each order.

Conveyor belts do all the leg work.

It's super efficient.

Everything I need is around me.

Yes, the way that the store's been laid out,

we have the most popular lines nearest to the pick zone.

So, I don't have to keep wandering up and down the...

No.

There are 100 of these so-called pick zones in this store.

The things we buy most of are closest to where you fill baskets.

And they make sure each zone has the same amount of top sellers,

to keep all the pickers just as busy.

So, in this zone, mostly what we sell is

chocolate bars and bottles of wine. That's correct, that's correct.

So, in this one, the biggest ones are going to be fizzy drinks...

and chocolate.

That's correct.

We buy a lot of champagne and hairspray.

That's correct.

It seems like an odd combination.

I'm loving this, cos I can actually see what the nation's buying.

It is a snap shot into what the customers' shopping trend is at the moment.

What we buy online is pretty similar to in store.

Milk, bananas and, curiously, cucumbers are high up on the things

we buy most of.

But there are some differences

in our online supermarket shopping habits.

Because they deliver to us, we tend to stock up on heavier,

bulkier items, like toilet paper and bottled water.

No, it's one pack. A whole pack?! Yeah! Crikey...

'Only 3% of our grocery shopping is done online,

'but that's expected to double over the next three years.'

Don't work very well, does it, this?

I think it's cos we're slow.

Sorry? It's cos we're slow...

Paul and his team have a lot of packing ahead,

but I'm not sure they'll be signing me up to join them.

'Theresa Huxley is Sainsbury's apple guru.

'She's been working with growers to boost the amount of British-grown apples on our shelves.'

..With the weather we've experienced during the summer. Let's have a look.

'But growing more is only the start.

'She now needs to keep the shops supplied with them as long as possible.'

Theresa! Morning.

'At this packing centre in Kent, they're getting apples ready for the shops.

'Apples that were harvested three-and-a-half months ago, when we last met.'

I love this. What is this? Just looks like a giant apple-bobbing.

This is a water flume, to carry the apples through to the grading machine.

We put them in water because it actually is really gentle

because we don't want to bruise those apples.

Over a million apples will go through this site in a day.

Which apples are these? These are Royal Gala, they're the same variety that you helped harvest.

I love a bathful of apples moving along slowly, don't you? I want to get in there with 'em.

Oh, do you want me to give you a leg up(?)

'The longer Theresa can fill the shelves with British apples, the more she sells.

'But they all have to be picked around the same time.

'So she's had to find a way to store the apples

'to keep the shops supplied long after harvest.'

So how difficult is it to store apples? Not that difficult, surely?

Oh, no, it's a very complex process, don't underestimate it.

It's not like storing a can of baked beans

when you put the cans in the cupboard and they'll stay like that for ever.

Enormous!

'At the other end of the packing plant is a hi-tech storage centre,

'chock-full of apples from dozens of different orchards.'

It's very cold in here.

And it's even colder in those stores.

How many apples in each fridge?

There's about 1.5 million. Enormous, these bins.

It's almost frightening.

'The storage manager is Chris Lynch.'

That is a great big door. It's a huge door.

It looks like a safe, it's like Fort Knox of fruit.

What we have in here, we have a store of Gala apples,

they've been in the store three-and-a-half months.

I feel like we're opening up Tutankhamen's tomb or something.

It's a bit like that, isn't it? We can now open the store.

So, what you have here is 600 of these bins...

You remember these bins in the field?

Were they the actual bins? They're the actual bins that we were packing.

There we go. They look pretty good to me. Theresa. Thank you.

How do you keep them for nearly four months?

What we do is we put them into a very, very large refrigerator.

You change the air within the store - not the normal air that you breathe in every day of the year,

21% is the normal oxygen level that you breathe, we reduce it to 1%.

You wouldn't exist in there. We're almost putting the apple to sleep.

'That little oxygen would put you and me to sleep for good.

'But for apples, it's this gas which makes them ripen and eventually rot.'

We're slowing down that natural process, but the fruit is gradually maturing.

It's ripening slowly, ripening slowly.

You can slow it down, you can't stop it, right? You can't stop it and you wouldn't want to.

If you stopped it maturing completely it would die. And we don't want to kill it.

So would I get longer life out of my apples if I put them in the fridge at home?

Yes, I'd definitely recommend you keep your apples in the fridge

and then bring out as many apples as you're going to consume in that day.

We don't, do we? But you should do.

Apples in the fridge. That's right. Cheers.

Now, let's have a...

Yeah. Sweet, juicy and crisp. Very good.

'Apples aren't on the shelves long enough in the supermarkets

'to justify the expense of putting them in fridges,

'but it's a good tip for where to keep them at home.'

When will they be in the shops? They'll be in the shops tomorrow.

'The other storerooms will remain sealed shut

'until the apples inside reach THEIR peak ripeness.'

'Up on the roof of those sealed stores,

'they regularly fish out test samples

'to keep an eye on how well they're lasting.

'The samples go to a lab

'where they're tested for sweetness and crunchiness.'

This machine measures the resistance.

And you want quite a bit of pressure don't you, otherwise it's spongy?

That's right.

'The crunchiness in apples comes from the hard starch,

'so as the apple ripens and the starch turns to sugar,

'the apple gets sweeter but it also gets softer.'

Is an apple, when you first harvest it... Has it got plenty of crunchiness,

but as the sweetness comes in it may lose it?

Is that what you're doing, is the sweetness going up and the crunchiness coming down? Yes. Yes.

Wow! There's so much going on here.

'So the apples can't stay in storage too long, or they'll lose their crunch.

'But as long as Theresa keeps a careful eye on them,

'she can supply British apples for nine months of the year.

Well, I think that this year

we should be able to probably go till the end of April.

And how far away from all-year-round British apples are we?

I reckon that probably within the next six years we'll have got it sorted.

'Apple boffins are now experimenting with tweaking the oxygen level up and down during storage,

'and they can use other gases to help keep the apples crunchier.

'The mission continues to bring us more British apples for longer.'

People want to buy home-grown apples.

And the supermarkets are finding new ways to make more British apples available to us.

And they're doing it by growing them as an intensively farmed crop,

which is very new for apple-growing over here, and then they're

taking a very old-fashioned idea of saving the excess for later.

But it is the science and the precision behind it

which is making these apples available to us on an epic scale.

'It's ten days to Halloween,

'and back at one of Britain's biggest pumpkin patches

'near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, Tesco's order is ripe and ready to go.

'Grower Steve Whitworth has a logistical marathon to run.'

This is busy, this is it now. We're loading lorries

sort of all day every day.

We've got 1.8 million to go out the door,

which is just over 500 full lorry loads.

'Pumpkins are a hugely important product to the supermarkets, and they're tricky to get right.

'No-one wants a pumpkin a day after Halloween,

'and the stores can't run out too early.

'Natasha Beigly from Tesco has to predict

'how many pumpkins she needs, and exactly when we are likely to buy them.'

We really analyse the numbers in terms of what customers bought

from where last year, what they're going to buy this year

and there's different external factors that impact that.

Halloween is on the Wednesday, that week is school holidays, so

families are going to have more time to spend doing creative events.

So because it's a Wednesday and it's half term, you expect to sell more? Yeah.

'Taking into account the quirks of this year's calendar, Natasha

'has forecast the date our pumpkin purchasing will reach its peak.'

This is what we're expecting this year,

so this is the weekend before Halloween, is where we expect to get our peak.

So at this point here they're walking through the store, they're seeing them and planning them...

it's now made it onto their shopping lists about there,

here at the weekend's when they're going to buy them? Yeah.

'But it's not enough for Natasha to know how many pumpkins she's going to sell and when -

'she's got to have them in the right place.

'She has to try and predict the precise pumpkin sales pattern

'for each and every one of Tesco's 2,400 stores around the whole of the UK.

'And it's the job of depots like this one in Peterborough

'to take in deliveries of pumpkins from the farm

'and distribute them to individual branches.'

'You'd think loads of giant pumpkins would be easy to spot.

'But this place is so vast, I'm struggling to find them.'

Here they are!

'Why didn't they tell me to look under P?'

Here are the pumpkins. But this is only a small amount.

Do you know, 200 of these boxes are going out today, 200.

This one's going to the superstore in Thetford, so

Mrs Jones, 27 Arlington Street, Thetford - this one's yours.

What fascinates me

is how they've worked out in advance how many they're going to sell.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't even know WHERE

I'm going to get a pumpkin for the kids, let alone when.

But they think they do. And they seem pretty confident.

'So, has Natasha pulled it off?

'It's two days before Halloween, just after her predicted weekend sales spike.

'I want to know if she got the right number of pumpkins

'in the right stores, at the right time.'

Natasha. Halloween's obviously in full swing.

It is, it's here.

This is the Monday after your big weekend.

Did we get the spike that you predicted?

We got our expected spike,

it was even bigger than we expected this year.

Crikey. You were expecting to sell 1.8 million.

1.8 million,

and we've now increased that to just over 2 million.

An extra 200,000 pumpkin.

'Luckily, Natasha had a reserve order with her grower Steve.

'She had first refusal on his extras, and snapped them up.

'Halloween really is growing.

'They've sold 20% more pumpkins than last year.'

Any particular stores do anything abnormal?

Sandhurst is our biggest store for selling pumpkins, yep,

they have topped the list of pumpkin sales this year.

Good to know that people with Range Rovers and wellies buy more pumpkins than other people.

'A bumper year for pumpkins is almost over.

'But in just a couple of weeks, Natasha will start work

'forecasting and planning for all our Halloween parties next year.'

'6.00am, and a big day for Sainsbury's.

'250 stores have got delivery of their Norfolk Black chicken.

'The new black-feathered breed, three years in the making,

'is going on sale for the first time.'

Our new range chicken. They look fabulous.

'This is the supermarket's biggest thing in chicken

'since the launch of organic 15 years ago.

'And they're using all the tricks of the trade

'to attract our attention to them, like these large labels called barkers.'

The new promotion just barks up at you.

They just stand out, they jump up at you.

'I'm here to see the birds make their debut,

'along with Judith Bachelor, Sainsbury's Director of Own Brand Products.

'The chickens are a big gamble for her supplier Mark Galton,

'and it's a step into the unknown for Judith too.'

Cos it's something brand-new

we haven't got what we would normally have, which is

the sales history of the product, so we would know roughly, if it

was a similar product, what to sell, therefore we'd know what to order.

So this is all up for grabs. Tricky.

Yeah. Tricky!

Got to have a look, come on, come on.

There they are. So there they are, look at them. Look at that.

Now you've finally seen it on the shelves,

can I ask you honestly how this makes you feel?

I'm pleased, actually. It delivers what I hoped it would deliver,

which is a bird that looks different

so it's obviously a different shape because of the breed

and it really stands out, so as a customer I'm not going to miss this.

You did a lot of work to make sure you had the black legs

so it looked different. Yeah. But you can't see the black leg on the chicken!

But what customers do tend to do is pick the whole birds up,

so once they pick the bird up they will realise that actually it is quite different.

Do you think that's so unusual it might be a bit ugly?

I guess for those people who aren't used to it it'll be something different.

I knew this one as a chick.

You probably did, actually, you've probably seen that bird.

'So, how will this different-looking chicken,

'the priciest on Sainsbury's shelves, go down with the public?'

If this doesn't work, will you be making the tea(?)

SHE LAUGHS

Come on, love, I want to talk to you. Come on, hurry up.

Can I show you something? Yeah. Hold onto that. Have a look at that.

Is there anything you notice that's different about that chicken? Yeah, the price.

Doesn't look any different? Er... It's got black legs.

Bit of a put-off, to be honest. Is it? Yeah.

Ooh, no, it would just put me off if I saw that.

Keep it round that way!

Does that look any different to you? Er... Different colour? Black, is it, are they usually black?

No, they're not. No, they're not.

They're brown or white.

So, do you like this?

Yeah, it looks good. I won't know until I cook it.

'Well, they've had a mixed reaction here.

'But Judith is happy with early sales, which exceeded her targets.

'The real test for any new product though, is not its first launch,

'it's whether we keep coming back for more.

'It'll be months before Judith can guarantee that this new chicken is here to stay.'

It's amazing, really.

All of that effort just to put a chicken on a shelf

and if you think about it, that chicken is one of

tens of thousands of products in here.

'I've had a real sense of what it takes

'to bring us our autumn staples.

'Suppliers working round the clock, and taking risks.

'Supermarkets setting strict specifications -

'and finding ways to deliver what we want, when we want it.

'Coming soon, Christmas -

'and the supermarkets are gearing up for the biggest event of their year.

'I'll see what it takes to deliver millions of turkeys...'

There's hours and hours' worth of work here! I hate turkeys.

'..find out about the battle to make sprouts a crowd-pleaser...'

Lots of bitterness, lots of iron.

Oh, that's like drinking petrol.

'..and reveal how they make sure we've got enough of our favourite Christmas tipple.'

That's like a great big paddling pool.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd