As Poundland launches £3 meal deal, I compare them with Boots, Tesco and Sainsbury’s and one stood out

I’ve always suspected that meal deals are a bit silly. You want a sandwich, but the shops sell them at a huge price and then give you a drink and a packet of crisps for just a few pennies more, so it looks like they were a great deal on top of that.

To remedy this mistake, Poundland has entered the meal deal market, offering a drink and two food items for just £3. The bargain chain said it aims to offer “the best possible value without compromising on taste or quality”.

I was asked to go to lunch every day for four days and compare the different offers available in Leicester city center for hungry workers on their lunch break, comparing Poundland’s food with the other big names in meal deals.

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Sainsbury’s

On the first day I went to Sainsbury’s in Granby Street where I found a good variety of wraps, rolls, salads and sushi. The basic meal deal is £3.50, but the good stuff costs more.

Some of the snack options were pretty fancy. There were olives, samosas, cheddar and caramelized onion rolls, Cathedral City snack bars – basically a piece of cheese – and small slices of malted bread.

I treated myself to a £5 ‘upgraded’ meal with a spicy chicken wrap, a scotch egg and a small bottle of Innocent mango, passion fruit and apple smoothie. The wrap tasted really good but had little hard bits of something in it that ruined it a bit. The scotch egg was dull and boring and I fed most of it to my cat. The juice was delicious though.

3/5

Boots

The boots had a wide range of options and ran the gamut from very healthy to the most calorie dense of the spectrum. You could have a salad and some pineapple chunks, or go the other way and get a large chicken tikka wrap with a flapjack snack. The price ranged from £3.60 to £3.99 depending on whether you went for the good stuff or the basic end of the scale.

For my lunch on day two I got a spicy Korean bowl of tempura chicken and rice with sweet chili mayo because it looked great. But the chicken pieces were far too tough for the flimsy wooden fork, and the rice was frozen together like leftover Chinese food the next day.

It was saved by the sweet chili mayo, which made everything taste so much better. For a snack I had a pair of Greek feta and red pepper rolls, which had far too little filling and were dry and bland – luckily the mayo was on hand to liven them up a bit too. For a drink I had a tiny but tasty bottle of Innocent Strawberry Banana Smoothie which could have been a little cooler. The meal deal I got was £3.99.

2/5

Poundland

The fridge in the Gallowtree Gate branch of Poundland was full of all sorts of savory stuff when we went together on day three – prawn pasta salads, cheese and onion sandwiches, Ginsters slices and wraps. There were Dairylea snacks, Peperami and various other meaty things for the snack option, all for just £3 with a drink. Downside, most of the drinks were not in the fridge because there was no room.

I opted for a chicken and bacon sandwich with a generous box of 10 chicken satay skewers plus a can of room temperature Coke. The skewers were rubbery but filling and the sandwich was pretty terrible.

While the bread was fine and the whole thing was quite moist when I bit into it, the meat seemed to somehow dry out in the mouth and I was left with a nasty artificial aftertaste.

I was glad that the lukewarm Coke washed the flavor away. It was a really bad sandwich, although my cat didn’t mind.

1/5

Tesco

On the fourth day I went to Tesco in the Haymarket shopping center to see what was available there for £3.90 – or £3.40 if you have a Clubcard. They had just about every kind of sandwich, including a Cheddar Plough, Beef and Red Leicester, Chicken Mozzarella and Pesto. They had the usual sandwich packs as well as wraps and a few subs and then the ‘premium meal deal’ options like large salads and pasta meals for £5.

The one that caught my eye was a chicken and smoked bacon sub. For a snack, options included falafel balls, scotch eggs, carrot sticks, fruit and more satay skewers, but I opted for a pair of Melton Mowbray pork pies. For a drink, I chose a fruit smoothie. Using my Club card I got everything for £3.40.

After the chicken and bacon sandwich disappointment of the previous day, the Tesco sub was a massive relief. One bite in and it was clear that this was the dish of the week – tasty, soft, moist and full of many other flavors besides chicken and smoky bacon.

There were hints of mustard, garlic and egg, while the bread was topped with corn grits, giving it a bonus texture. It was never boring and when I moved on to the pork pies they were by far the best snack of the week.

They were dense and meaty, as they should be, and not weak and overly salty like bad pork pies. The smoothie was delicious and the whole meal was quite filling too.

5/5

Conclusion

After the first three days, it seemed to me that the food got better the more you paid for it. But if you want a meal deal, the only one I’d recommend is the Tesco one – especially if you’ve got a Clubcard to save an extra 50p.

If you’re strapped for cash and tempted by the £3 on Pound offer, I wouldn’t bother. You might as well save even more money by making a bigger, fresher, tastier sandwich at home.

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