Premier Convenience Store, also known as the Clifton Food Market, situated on the troubled Clifton…read moreStreet, is one of several convenience stores that are vying for diminishing trade since the one way system was implemented about a year ago. One of the ways that this store attempts to compete is by keeping its doors open as much as possible, and so it is open seven days a week from 8.00 in the morning to ten 'o' clock at night. It is also one of the few places that still stocks newspapers, and of course the discounted alcohol that it carries remains ever popular! Another thing that is impacting the smaller corner shops on the street is the fact that the council have granted permission for a Tesco Metro midway up the street. Although Premier Convenience Store is part of a chain, it is run as a family business, allowing the owner to make a reasonable profit for the responsibilities of running a complex shop of this kind. Conversely, Tescos employ people on minimum wage to work all hours, and then keep the profits for themselves. This means that huge sums of money leave the local economy, and end up in the pockets of the fat cats in London. This is really bad news for Clifton Street and Cardiff as well as Wales as a whole. What Cardiff and Clifton Street need more than anything else is for the council to stop making choices that will further entrench the recession, making it ever more difficult to turn these desperate times around. Cardiff needs a good flow of money within the local economy to endure the vicissitudes of the global slump. If this does not happen, the people of Cardiff can look forward to the prospect of working unsocial hours for an almost punitive wage, with all of the profits being siphoned out of the economy and shipped off to England! If this happens the people of Cardiff will not have the spending power to improve their lot over time!

Hooray! I was seriously in trouble with my allergies this morning and because it's Easter Sunday,…read morenothing was open. Not a Boots or a Superdrug or even a Schuh was available. Figuring I would have to suffer, I managed to spot this shiny new Sainsbury's through my inflamed and tearing eyes. Holding out hope they would have something to cure my ills, I was cheerfully pleased to see a blister pack of 7 Claritin pills on the shelf. Yes, they had a whole bunch more for sale - drinks, candies, magazines, lager, wine, sandwiches, heat-and-eat meals and all sorts of other probably great stuff - but all I needed was relief from the histamine attack going on. I was able to operate the self-checkout and got Nectar points too! Hooray! Three cheers for Sainsbury's! Hip! Hip! Hooray!

I know it's a Sainsbury's Local and not a full grocery store, but this location is still quite…read morecramped and poorly stocked. Perhaps due to all the tourists, but inside it's culinary mayhem. May the Gods forgive any lone fool who wanders in without a plan nor the foreknowledge of where his target products lie.

Albany Convenience Store is one of several in this immediate area. It sells all of the usual…read moreproducts from fresh, tinned, snack and frozen food through to newspapers and magazines, booze, soft drinks and tobacco. Ice creams and confection are also available. Services include being a 'payzone'. So nothing too exceptional there! It is somewhat extraordinary in one respect however. Instead of leading with discounted alcohol, with the accompanying posters pasted all over the windows, Albany Convenience Store has a blackboard by the door where the latest offers are displayed. During my most recent visit they were offering two loafs of bread for £1.40, and Kingsmill Value at £0.89. Bread is a long way away from Special Brew or Dr. Carlsberg as it also known, and I commend this store for its more family orientated focus! You could also get two pints of milk for £0.89 on the day that I called in recently, although this price is pretty standard for this shop, and so it's not likely to have changed in the meantime.

Albany Convenience Store is one of your standard mini-market establishments. You walk in and you've…read moregot the papers and the magazines, you have a bit of fruit and veg, plenty of biscuits (though the cracker selection could do with some work) and so on and so forth but make your way to the back of the store. Here you'll find the booze section, stocking all the usual suspects. So what I hear you cry? Delve deeper and you'll find something of pure evil. It comes in black and red striped can. It costs £1.20. It has the potential to destroy everything in Roath / Cathays. I'm talking about Oranjeboom Extra Strong. That's right the student standby is now going for the trampy jugular with a brew weighing at a mighty 8.5%. You have been warned. At least if you do partake in a bout of total liver destruction, you can pick up a box Sugar Puffs on the way out for a comforting final meal. Albany Convenience Store is handy like that.

Very close to several large student housing blocks this is a shop with one clientele in mind. For…read moreone thing these dedicated guys are open every day from 7am till midnight. A quick walk around the shop reveals all the student essentials you can imagine. They have tights, fruit juice, a wide range of male and female toiletries, a stationary section and the largest selection of biscuits I have ever seen. This is not an exaggeration; think Hobnobs, Digestives, Crunch biscuits, ones I'd forgotten about, one's I've never even heard about! A whole wall of biscuits - extraordinary. As all students necessitate the stuff there's obviously a wide choice of beers and wine with regular deals and discounts. Ready meals, soups, pre made sandwiches and for those on a budget the morning after, miniature boxes of cereal. A well thought out shop keeping Bristol's students satiated.

If temp bar and waiter work is your thing (or catering / hospitality in general), then West One…read moreRecruitment should be on your hit list. The staff are really personable - you can register immediately and they give you a crash course / refresher in how to lay a table and carry multiple plates. They aren't one of those agents that never get in touch - quite literally you could have work the next day. They often have to send a few staff at a time to certain venues - so if any of the other temps has a car, they organise drop-off and pick-up from the office, which is a great help.

A remarkable assortment of products, always of a high quality, which includes some unusual items…read morethat are hard to find in other places. Products purchased in bulk can save you a ton of money! The delivery comes at a fair price, is carefully packaged, and occurs at the expected time.

Incredible food! Its always so busy there so if you like your personal space its not great as the…read moretables can be overly close to one another its a touch uncomfortable :( but the food and everything else does more than make up for my need for space :)

This Londis is basically the village shop stocking your basic amenities that you may need if you…read morelive here or are visiting the area. It is quite a big store and stocks a large raneg of the basic items that people want and need. This store is located in the centre of Woolacombe, with a selection of other shops. There is parking outside but this can be very limted in the summer months when the village is busy. The store is a 5 minute walk from the beach so it is good for those days when you are lounging on the beach you can get stuff onthe way to or from the beach.

This branch of Spar is a really small store on Queen Street in Cardiff city center, I came here…read morewith it being a 24 hour store to pick up some drinks to take back to my hotel. As mentioned even in the name of the store being an Express store, this store is really small, even considering the brand standards of Spar and that there branches seem tobl be small enough as it is. There were only two rows, one of which being the queue so it means at peak times you can be restricted from browsing due to having to queue at the same time as the store, this was inconvenient and in a way felt like you were being rushed out, due to a lack of things to look at and everything being really small and narrow. There were two members of staff on the till, they both seemed unwelcoming and not very friendly and didn't seem to be doing anything. To conclude, there are loads of similar places in Cardiff center, even close to my Hilton hotel so it would be worth taking a look at Tesco Express or Little Waitrose in lieu of this store, so sadly I feel it deserves a single one star.

No matter what you think of the Spar company, there's one thing you can't deny; Spar know how to do…read morebusiness. There's no doubt that our fair city is a lovely cosmopolitan shopalooza, but on top of this it is also a rapidly developing residential area, filled with a series of high rise apartment buildings where the executive earners of Cardiff are massing. Whilst the city could once have gotten away with the small town vibe it used to carry, Cardiff is no longer a place that can close its doors at 6pm every night; it has residents to think of. On top of this, you have the drunks who are attracted to any establishment still shining its lights at 5am, especially if they're selling Ginster's pasties to the masses. This is the market Spar have tapped into. Where Tesco and Sainsbury's close their doors at 8pm, Spar caters to everyone all night long. Admittedly, it's irksome having to shout orders through a waist high letterbox after 10pm, but it is a price people are willing to pay if that's the only place they're going to get a 4am cigarette refill.

To people not from these parts some place names are legendary about Bristol: The Tobacco Factory…read moreand the Docks for example. Once you live here there are others: The Bear Pit, Cribbs etc. Another place you don't really know about until you live here is The Best. The (self titled) Best Supermarket is legendary. The shop is open 24/7 every day of the year. Even in the harshest of blizzards I have never seen the door closed. They sell crisps, chocolate bars and various other things you would expect of such a convenience store. It is after hours however when they really become something else. This is the only shop that will sell all types of alcohol at all hours. The staff are hardened as you'd expect; their clientele the late drinkers: poets after another bottle of inspiration, students after more beers and all the rest of it. The Best Supermarket is, well, what it is.

Yes it has all your desied goods!…read more Yes it is 24 hours! And yes you can satisfy pretty much any food or drink craving at any time of the day by getting something from here. But 'the best supermarket'?, i'll give them a little le-way for artistic license but I think they should perhaps pre-fix the name with 'Arguabley' then it will give them some margin for error! But seriousley, this place is pretty good, great to have a place of convieniance and open all hours, reliable and plentiful, not bad...

Don't be put off by the fact that this is clearly a local shop; it's not necessarily for local…read morepeople. It's a little larger than it looks on the outside. Only a little larger, though. But it offers all the amenities you might need that a supermarket would offer, just probably not as cheap. It doesn't do 'own brands' so you may have to splash out on Kellogg's or on real Coca Cola, but if you're short of a few bits then this place probably has them. There is a little bakery at the back that is normally empty by the afternoon, so you have to be quick to beat the locals to a loaf of bread. It's a small shop, so there's only ever one staff member around, and it's quite unlikely there'll be more than one other customer walking inside when you get in, so it's certainly a more relaxing shopping experience than a city supermarket. If you're keen to get a bargain every time you shop this probably isn't ideal, but it offers more than most corner-shops in its range of food so it's worth a visit if you're in need of a quick shop.

Had a truly terrible experience here. Owner was rude, aggressive and threatening after we parked…read more'incorrectly' outside. I'm all for supporting local businesses, but will never return and suggest others avoid