this: No-frills (disambiguation)

No-frills or no frills is a term used to describe any service or product for which the non-essential features have been removed. The use of the term "frills" refers to a style of fabric decoration in clothing or soft furnishings and is a metaphor for excessive and costly decoration. In business terms, extra services offered to customers for no additional charge may be designated as a a "frill" - for example, free drinks on airline journeys or a radio installed in a hire car. No-frills businesses operate on the principle that by removing luxurious additions, customers may be offered lower prices.

Common products and services for which no-frills brands exist include airlines, supermarkets, vacations and automobiles.

No-frills supermarkets

• They do not decorate aisles or even fill shelves. Instead, pallets of the products on offer are simply parked alongside the aisles, and customers picking up products will gradually empty them. When all items on a pallet have been sold, they are replaced. Prices are given on plain labels.
• Queueing at the checkout is relatively common, as staffing levels reflect average demand rather than peak demand. At actual peak times, customers often have to wait.
• Shopping bags are charged for, as they are seen as a frill. Thus many shoppers put their shopping in the old cardboard boxes that the products came in, put it directly in their trolleys, re use old bags, or buy shopping bags at a low fee e.g. 3p/5c. Some low cost stores (such as Kwik Save in the United Kingdom) have abandoned this policy due to complaints from customers.
• They work on the principle that in most supermarkets, 20% of products on sale account for 80% of what people buy. Therefore, they only stock the most commonly sold products.
• They only take cash and debit cards (although this has changed in many stores over the years due to the high usage of credit cards).
• They only open at peak times i.e. 9 am to 6 pm Monday to Saturday. Although a few stores are 24hrs.
• They often do not serve branded items. Instead, they sell generic or private label products.
• The shopping carts have a coin-operated slot, to ensure that the trolleys are kept on site.
• They usually lack butcher, bakery and deli counters.
• Staff (or even the managers) sometimes do the cleaning.

Examples of no-frills supermarkets are:

• Save-A-Lot (United States).
• Lidl (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands & United Kingdom).
• Aldi (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, USA, & United Kingdom).
• Franklins (also sells the "No Frills" generic product range) (Australia)
• Food Basics, a subsidiary of A&P (USA)
• Food Basics, a subsidiary of A&P Canada, formerly owned by A&P, but sold to Metro in 2005 (Canada)
• Price Chopper, a subsidiary of Sobey's (Canada)
• Maxi, a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies (Canada)
• No-Frills, a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies (Canada).
• Bónus (Iceland). '''
• Netto (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland).
• REMA 1000 (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Slovakia).
• Cassa, a subsidiary of the K-Kauppa chain (Finland).
• Alepa, a subsidiary of the S-market chain) (Finland).
• Denner (Switzerland) used to be a no-frills retailer, but has started polishing its image.
• Pak'n Save (New Zealand)
• Dia* (Spain, Greece, Turkey, Brazil, China, Argentina, Portugal)
• Minipreço* (Portugal)
• Ed* (France)
• Usave, a subsidiary of the Shoprite chain (South Africa, Angola, Ghana, Malawi, Swaziland and Namibia)
• - Dia, Minipreço and Ed are all part of the Dia Group, which is in turn part of the Carrefour Group.
• WinCo Foods, an employee owned supermarket in Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and California in the USA which offers low prices on generic and namebrand products.