Fiona McCade: Supermarket snob wars just escalated AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine used to sneer at Aldi and its customers, describing the supermarket as "a Third World shopping experience," until one day, I saw her in there. I raised my eyebrows as she scuttled off to hide behind the Special Offer cotton pyjamas. Now she never mentions Aldi, but she knows I know she knows that as shopping experiences go, it's not bad at all. I love Aldi, and Lidl, and all the places where I can get decent quality stuff at a reasonable price. I always thought that Brits - and especially Scots - loved a bargain, but I might be wrong. Tesco has been selling its own Value brand - you know, the budget range; plain, white packaging except for the red and blue Tesco logo - since 1993, but now market research has revealed that some customers are embarrassed to be seen buying Value products. "Embarrassed is probably the wrong word," says Andy Yaxley, commercial director of Tesco Fresh Food, "But customers told us that they questioned the quality of the Value brand because of the packaging and some didn't feel comfortable putting it in their trolleys." If you don't feel "comfortable" putting perfectly good food in your trolley because it doesn't have a pretty label, I would suggest that you are off yours. The insanity of label-obsession has obviously spread from fashion to groceries. Now, you're nobody unless your fridge is full of stylishly packaged food. I'm bitterly disappointed with some of my fellow Tesco customers. I'd always thought we were in this together, united in search of low-priced, good quality food. Now I know that all this time, you've held me in quiet contempt. I had Value tins in my trolley, you had Finest, and you were looking down on me, thinking "Peasant!" Quite unexpectedly, the class system is alive and well in the aisles of Tesco, which raises a huge question about pecking order. If us Tesco Value customers are at the bottom of the pile, who is at the top? The people buying big brand-names? Or the people buying Tesco's Finest? The fact is, if you're in Tesco to start with, what's the point in getting fussy about what labels you're buying? It's not like you're in Waitrose, you know. It's certainly not like you're sitting at home, twiddling your thumbs in your immaculate Morningside mansion, waiting for the Ocado van to arrive. You're in bleedin" TESCO, so suck it up and make the most of it. Believe me, nobody's judging you. The rest of us are all far too busy congratulating ourselves on cleaning out the just-past-its-sell-by-date shelf. However, the biggest joke is yet to come. Tesco says it's totally rebranding and relaunching its most basic product line because that's what its customers want. So, what are they going to call this spanking new departure from the bargain-basement Value range? They're calling it...wait for it...the Everyday Value range. Now, I'm no expert in supermarket psychology, but I'm guessing that if someone is prissy enough to be embarrassed by Value products, they will also be fairly embarrassed by Everyday Value products. If I were Tesco's CEO, I'd be more inclined to launch the I Can't Believe It's Not Expensive range, aimed at people who are so stupid, they'd rather pay more for a bit of glossy packaging. The tagline could be: "Make your neighbours think you're rich!" The other sad thing about the new Everyday Value range - apart from its existence - is the design of its packaging. Gone is the trusty Tesco red, white and blue and instead the products are wrapped in orange and white - and what, in the UK supermarket universe, does orange and white signify? Sainsbury's, of course. So, what message is Tesco trying to send out? That if you can't afford to shop at Sainsbury's, you can come and buy Tesco Everyday Value products instead, and maybe the sad people scrutinising your shopping will be fooled by the orange and white packaging into assuming you're a better class of person? In which case, maybe Tesco should just bite the bullet, rebrand and redesign everything in green and white, and call itself Maitrose.