A man who visited 1,000 supermarkets said two items turned up in each one (stock) (Image: Getty)
A man who has been to 1,000 supermarkets in 150 countries has revealed that he found a couple of British products that would pop up in almost every single store around the world.
Dan Kelly, 38, began his journey through the supermarket aisles of the world in 2014 when he was looking for a job.
A languages and humanities graduate, Dan found a job working for a company in which his role was to collect data on the cost of living for businesses whose own job was to relocate people for businesses.
It would be Dan’s job to find out what the price of a product was in a supermarket in a country and that data would be passed onto an office in London where it would be processed.
In Dan’s case, this means he would turn up to a new major city every two days. In each city he would turn up with a list of around 164 items and his sole job was to find out the price of each of those items in that city.
Dan travelled around the world searching for prices (stock) (Image: Getty)
As a result, Dan has become very familiar with the world’s supermarkets and shopping malls as well as the inside of passenger aircrafts.
In 11 years on the job Dan visited 1,000 supermarkets in 150 countries, mainly travelling alone with a budget of £70 a day for accommodation.
Speaking to the i newspaper about this role, Dan spoke about some of the surprising things he found in many supermarkets, including two common items that are very popular in the UK.
Some items were strangely common, including coffee, tea, and some types of biscuit. He explained: “You’d always be able to find them, even at the back of a dusty shelf.
“Tea and coffee as well. I would see the 100g red box of Twining’s English Breakfast Tea everywhere. And 100g jars of Nescafé Gold.”
Dan said he kept seeing Nescafe (stock) (Image: Getty)
Although Dan has since left the role, one he admits most people don’t do for as long as him, he looks back on it fondly. He has since wrote a comedy show about it. Reflecting on how he feels about the job he said: “One fun thing about the job was that you always had to talk to people, even if just to say ‘hi’ or ask for a price.
“Walking in with a big smile and saying hello would open everything up. That bit of human connection will go a long way. It’s hard not to be cheesy, but that would be my grand learning.”
Whilst Dan knows a thing or two about the prices of goods in supermarkets around the world, shoppers in the UK have recently been informed of the cheapest supermarket in the UK.
According to Which? the cheapest supermarket in the UK in May was ALDI. Assessing the prices of 95 items, ALDI had the lowest total price with £168.30.
In a statement on how they decide what the cheapest supermarket is, Which? said: “We check the prices of hundreds of grocery items at eight major supermarkets, using an independent price comparison website. For each supermarket, we calculate the average price of each item across the month, then add those up to get each supermarket’s average total price.”
