Meal Deals

In the UK, Meal Deals are a staple of office lunch. They usually contain:

A main: a sandwich or salad box.
A snack: fruit, confectionary or crisps.
A drink: water, juice, or a fizzy drink.

Before Covid, meal deals would cost about £3, but we're quickly approaching £6-£8 in recent years, mostly driven by the inclusion of "premium sandwiches".

They're a good, simple meal to get you through the day with a decent variety. You can get them in most British supermarkets: Tesco, Boots, Sainsburys, Morrisons, M&S - even Aldi have them. For me, this is a staple of British culture which isn't widely known by visitors to the UK.

A selection of mains from the Tesco selection (source: idk, Tesco I guess)

The best sandwich is M&S coronation chicken. Tesco have a similar one which is okay, but Tesco severely under fill their sandwiches, doing the scummy thing of pushing all the filling to the fore and leaving none in the rest of the bread.

Meal deals power the UK, though they are under threat from market forces, corporate greed, and hatred of lunch time rituals. This is why I'm chosing to enshrine the meal deal. May it exist forever.

EDIT 31/03/2026

Today there was a queue in TESCOs for the meal deal. It was the most British thing I've ever seen!

EDIT 03/08/2026

Friendship ended with M&S coronation chicken, now best friends with cacio e pepe chicken wrap from Tesco.

EDIT 05/08/2026

Heartbroken! They don't have the Cacio E Pepe chicken wrap for sale! Situationship begun with TESCO finest Limited Edition Italian Inspired Chicken & Rocket Pesto Dressing Wrap (it's actually very good).

I'm super wary of it being limited edition. Why are all the good things only here for a season?

EDIT 19/08/2026

A blood curse on whoever invented the idea that a lack of sandwich fillings could be hidden behind packaging, allowing half the sandwich to be two empty pieces of bread. Almost everywhere is guilty of doing this now.

I cry out, but nobody hears my wail! (Unless I put it in a complaint form I guess)