TL;DR - Prestwich's very own co-operative food store…read more Chorlton has the Unicorn Grocery - Prestwich has Village Greens. It may not be as big as it's south Manchester contemporary, but it's got bags of character. It's more about being a local community store than being a hippy hang out. This is a place for people who care about their food, rather than people who are trying to lead an alternative lifestyle. As such, whilst there's a lot of locally sourced fruit and veg (and things from further afield) you'll also find lots of dairy and meat for sale as well. There's fresh, chilled and store cupboard foods on sale - all ethically sourced, and much of it organic. They even do household products too, with an emphasis on being environmentally friendly and biodegradable. Behind the counter there is freshly baked bread and an assortment of gorgeous looking cakes and desserts. Staff are always helpful and friendly and nothing is too much trouble. The store has a lot of competition in the area, with an enormous Tesco nearby, Aldi down the road and an M&S Food Hall practically next door - but it genuinely offers something different to the area and is well worth some of your hard earned pennies.

Village Greens is nothing short of sensational.....Stocking fresh organic locally produced Fruit &…read moreVeg, a large variety of healthy & nutritious products from Chocolate to grains to cereals, pulses, drinks, dairy & non-dairy vegan ranges, sauces, wraps & pies, toiletries, a deli section, fresh breads, spreads, teas, coffees, alcohol and sundries.....etc Plenty of ethically local sourced goods, and even has a daily soup freshly made..... The staff are exceptionally warm & welcoming and lots of fun, and are very happy to stock products if not available, and can be easily sourced. This is my (fairly local) main shop and stocks a huge variety for it's size. It's like a little family in there and you feel part of a "community". If you really want to get serious about looking after your health.....Village Greens is the place to come.

This store is always a mess, with rubbish strewn every where. Never any staff when you need one,…read moreand top it off with un predictable closing times.

Not a fan of this store as when you walk in from the street there are 5 or 6 steps down in to the…read moreshop. There is no ramp and the lift is locked - you need a staff member to let you in and out of it! With plenty of other shops nearby I doubt I'll go back.

I've been on a mission to discover more of north Manchester recently. Cheetham Hill is one of the…read morereas which holds a lot of interest for me as a foodie with Cheetham hill road being a great example of multi-cultural Manchester. As well as being another central hub of Manchester's south Asian community it's also adjacent to Manchester's Jewish community. This Superstore sits inbetween the two communities and is buzzing with activity all week long. It's probably one of the biggest stores of its kind in the city. The summertime is a perfect time to visit, for me at least because it's mango season! Honey mangos are shipped in all the way from Pakistan and are priced very reasonably considering they are HEAVENLY! There's also a butchers in house and the store houses a library of herbs and spices. In short there are stores like this littered aross the city in smaller denominations. And in all honesty they probably cater for all the things that are available here. But if you want that remote spice from a youtube recipe or want a faluda flavour ice cream like I do, this is the only place to go.

Wow, no review for the largest branch of Manchester Superstore - says a lot about the current…read moredemographic of Yelp reviewers in Manchester! There are actually two large premises of Manchester Superstore directly opposite each other on either side of Cheetham Hill Road, and if you are into these kind of stores then you will need to check them both out! It may be the case that the one on the left as you travel out of town is more for a quick shop, but it also has a bunch of stuff upstairs - cookware, and kebab shop consumables! Across the road - on the right hand side of the road as you travel out of town - is a building of impressive architecture, which seems to be the wholesale premises, although it is open to the general public, no problem, and this is where I will be shopping from now on. I go for fresh produce, and freshness was above average plus I think Cheetham Hill prices are a bit lower. Just the usual routine for me - stocked up with okra, drumstick, karela, fresh chickpeas, plus fresh herbs which are the bargain of the century at 2 huge bunches for £1. Always good for a bit of ethnic atmosphere. Not quite as much of a feeling of a well-oiled machine as say Worldwide in Rusholme and not as busy at the tills, but the manager is a bit more friendly here on my visit, and opened up another till to get me through quickly. Really love my Desi supermarkets!

I've recently been training for the Great Manchester 10k run. As I've been increasing the…read moredistances, I've had to change my route to include areas I normally wouldn't go. Including Ancoats. I wouldn't usually go here mainly because when I first moved to the NQ, it was a bit run down and aside from the occasional visit to the Argos, there was no particular reason to visit that area. Plus, as regular readers of my reviews will know, I tend to be a creature of habit and go to the same places again and again. Well running up and down Great Ancoats Street, and some of the side streets, has opened my eyes to the new places around here. Including Ancoats General Store, which I first noticed 10 days or so ago. When I ran past it last night I made a mental note to myself that I must remember to come here this weekend. And I'm glad I did. It isn't that much bigger than the corner shop I used to frequent as a kid but it fits in so much good stuff. There's fresh bread to greet you as you enter and then the aisles of food to the left. The decor is the kind of decor I've come to expect from hipster type places , with pipes/air conditioning exposed. But, having said that, I'm not sure I'd describe it as hipster. There's the organic ranges, plenty of dairy/gluten free choices but then there's the familiar brands/products that you'd expect in a supermarket/corner shop. They sell magazines too. They sell a good range of alcohol and alcohol accompaniments. I specify the 'alcohol accompaniments' because I noticed a good range of tonics for gin, that you'd not usually expect from a relatively small shop. I noticed a lot of local produce: the bakery providing the bread, the eggs, the milk, just a few examples. Some of the products are priced the same or lower than Tesco/Aldi (the Longley Farm yoghurts are well priced at 35p, for example) and some of the organic/dairy/gluten free stuff was a little pricier but that's the same anywhere. I was chatting to the guy who was on the till and he told me they'd been open for two and a half weeks. They are going to have a cafe and also hold meet the producer type of events, including good and wine tastings. That's the reason I've gone for 4* rather than 5* : it just seems too early to properly rate the place, especially as it seems there's so much more to come. I highly recommend a visit.

It's a coffee shop (with a bar) and a general store, florists, bakery, card shop and they are…read moreplaying postmodern jukebox over the top. I never thought I'd say this about a corner shop...but it's just cool. "Very Northern Quarter" in the nicest possible way.

A convenient, and busy small M&S Simply Food in a somewhat prime location, close to Prestwich…read moreVillage centre, across the road from Tesco and TGI Fridays and right near junction 17 of the M60. There is a free car park outside, however access both in and out can be somewhat troublesome. It is right on a busy crossroads, meaning that if approaching from the other side of the road, you have to squeeze yourself through 2 lanes of queueing traffic. The car park is shared with their neighbour Pets at Home. This isn't really somewhere to do a weekly shop, but if you're struggling for a meal idea or in a hurry then its perfect. They do have a somewhat deserved reputation for being both expensive but providing good quality products. There are some great offers recently such as the '2 can dine in for a tenner' deal, or the more recent '4 picnic items for £10 with a free bottle of wine' Since this store opened, they have given up some retail space to make room for a small cafe, I assume this must be more lucrative for them. On my quick visit on a Sunday morning, I managed to get everything I needed in a matter of minutes but then had to wait for some time to be served. The cashier was ringing a bell which is supposed to be a signal for other cashiers to come and help, but sadly no-one did.

This is quite a small Marks and Spencers store in Pretswich with a range of products which is not…read moreas good as larger stores, hence my review can't be too favourable towards Marks and Spencers despite how much I like the store and their selection most of the time. Another problem I had was with the cafe, It was a very small cafe but it was getting very busy and crammed with so many people coming in, I understand the store is small but considering how busy the cafe gets compared to the store, they need to extend it slightly with more chairs and staff. I had quite a wait just to order my jacket poatato even though 2 people were ahead of me, The cafe's staff seemed to understand what Gluten was and checked what if they were giving me contained or didn't contain gluten, I was sad to see the Chicken and Bacon Jacket Poatato what I had my heart set on was out of stock so I had to settle for Tuna and Sweetcorn. The Poatato was not great and it wasn't buttered. The staff however did not make me aware of the sign that cross contamination could happen in the kitchen. Overall, this is just a Marks and Spencers store for food and instead of acting somewhere where you can get most if not all of your weekly shop items, this place is more like an expensive corner shop hence I have to give 2 stars.

This is a recently opened Aldi, a great little store, really handy, they have a good range of…read moreproducts. There's not much you can't get there now. The checkout operators are always polite and friendly at the Prestwich store.

This store has had issues with food freshness for a long time. After last Christmas (2014), I went…read moreto the store on 27th December and the entire store stunk of rotten meat. It was first thing at opening and I can only assume some bright spark either turned the fridges off over Christmas or something similar. They were not removing the rotten food from the shelves but continuing to sell the meat and fish that was visibly rotten. I picked up some Salmon, it was warm and obviously not fit for consumption. Just to this week - I went there again to get some fresh vegetables because they are cheaper than elsewhere but there was very little in store, shelves empty and a packet of sausages my partner picked up were GREEN. We noticed in the queue for the till and handed it to the cashier who shrugged and put it on the side. At no point did he ask about the other goods or call for someone to investigate. It probably went back on the shelves, or the remaining ones that may well have been in the same condition were left to be taken home by customers (I've witnessed a manager tell an employee to arrange things a certain way to that people will buy the goods...albeit at a different store but it goes to show the policies they have). Aldi, if you want to make smug advertisements and do smug campaigns about how you're better than all the other supermarkets and about your amazing value for money: have an iota of integrity and stop selling ROTTING food. I've given Aldi so many chances, even stopped buying meat/fish there and just stuck to fresh veg and cured meats but even their veg is subpar. It's either past best or the ripe & ready stuff is rock hard and not ripe or ready as advertised. Also, customer service is non existent unless they want you to fill in a questionnaire about 'how they did'. I may report this particular store. Already done so on Twitter but they're useless & obviously don't care. Obviously, after several occasions of making Aldi aware of the quality issues at the Prestwich store and it getting worse, it needs to be escalated outside of the company. DOUBLE CHECK EVERYTHING YOU BUY - MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE WITH ANY PERISHABLE GOODS. Save yourself from a long, miserable and traumatic time on the toilet, or worse.

Sadly, I've never got the hype about Aldi, they might be associated with "bargains" and "low…read moreprices" however I don't really agree, I always find that in ALDI you are paying less for a decreased level of quality, service and in-store experience and this branch here in the Manchester Arndale sums up my scepticism completely. This branch is in quite an unusual condition, it is located on the upper floor of the Manchester Arndale, with enterences from street level from Market Street and from Shopping centre level, where the actual only floor of the store is. The store just didn't feel nice, and it felt like a Pound shop in certain areas, it just felt cheap with the poor level of shelving etc, it just wasn't very nice at all. ALDI and LIDL are very similar in this approach across most of their branches, which are two very similar "discount" brands however another problem with the brand that this branch is a prime example of is the queuing, the queuing system was really badly handled, there are no self service tills, customer service desks or anything like that here, there is just a very low number of tills which don't cope well with queues, I eventually decided to leave and buy my products from somewhere else because of this. I did notice the store manager too who basically stared at me at a comment I made about the poor quality feel of the store and the cheap shelving and layout, he basically rudely stared at me before walking off, he didn't even acknowledge me or try to speak about the problem. Sadly this ALDI branch at the Manchester Arndale is a prime example of all things wrong with the brand especially with the poor, cheap layout and the awful queuing which isn't handled very well at all, so sadly deserves a single one star. which is a shame to start off on a negative foot as this is my first review for an ALDI store.

I'm not prone to depression but spending five minutes in this Aldi definitely made me feel like I…read morewas sliding down a long and bleak hillside. For starters, this store is about ten times bigger than any Aldi I've seen before and looks and feels like a gigantic Iceland. There's no attempt at seducing customers or displaying goods in an attractive manner - everything is just stacked up as easily as possible with horrible signage. The lights look like interrogation strip-lights and there's no music or ambience. In short, the whole focus is on the products and what a mixed bunch they are! One minute you're walking past an aisle of cheap biscuits, crackers and crisps, the next cheap cheap DVD players, walkmans and sat navigation systems. At the back of the store there's an even cheaper fresh and frozen section with perfect looking fruit and veg, meat, fish, cheese, butter, pizzas, puddings and ready meals. Strangely, Aldi seem to sell odd bits and bobs of clothing too from cheap fishing gloves and hats to wool scarves. I'm sure you could pick up some good things if you looked hard enough but frankly, I can't imagine having the time or the inclination to return.