This branch of Iceland appears to be a recently refurbished store, it is a nice and pleasant modern branch of the chain, which is often associated with frozen foods despite being a supermarket chain, albeit one of the smaller supermarket chains in the UK in comparison to the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's with the company as a whole only having around 2.2% market share. This branch is one of the rare branches of Iceland located in the city centre, located in Williamson Square in Liverpool, which is close to St John's and Lime Street Station. I called in the store to pick up some yoghurts to take back to my hotel room after being attracted into the store as it looked modern, with a mixed colour decor which was rather appealing, stating clearly above the range what it was the range was, as you can see from my pictures of the Frozen and Wine sections.
The selection of most products was okay, especially for a city centre location where doing a full weekly shop is unlikely to be your priority, it had a good range of essentials in a store which is larger than your average Tesco Express (perhaps the same size as a Tesco Metro store), from snacks to dairy and bread, even an impressive yoghurt selection, including some yoghurts I have previously struggled to find elsewhere, like the new Munch Bunch yoghurts in a small 6 pack, I had a coupon for with Shopnium which I've been unable to use for a few days, so I was pleased to pick some up here today.
The staff in the store didn't seem too friendly, the store seemed understaffed and the staff they did have didn't seem too helpful or pleasant. The staff also seemed wasted with one staff member, walking around like a headless chicken hanging out bags, in my opinion, this is not only a waste of a staff member who could be around the store helping customers find things perhaps, but the bags would be much better placed on the individual self-service tills, with Liverpool statistically having a considerably higher shop-lifting rate than the rest of the UK, it might be the store don't trust people to have plastic bags at the tills, because they feel people might not pay the government levy on them, or something else - whatever the reason it is uncalled for and truly inconvenient, especially when in a rush.
This store however is a nice brand to have in a city centre, and is much more modern than other Iceland stores I've visited, often in smaller towns such as my closest branch in Middleton, Manchester, albeit not perfect with little to no free from range, and the staff issues mentioned do effect the store, but I do feel it is worthy of a slighty generous three-star rating and it is definitley an above average branch in terms of overall feel of Iceland. read more