A primary school teacher, who appeared on the Channel 4 show ‘Come Dine With Me’, has been exposed as a serial shoplifter. Sophie Hunter-Brown was so notorious that her photo was displayed on the staff walls of her local Asda store. She was spotted in a repeat episode of the hit show and subsequently arrested by police for several food thefts from the Asda superstore in Aberdare, South Wales. The 30-year-old has since been banned from every Asda in the UK. Despite her shoplifting spree, which she blamed on not being able to 'afford to feed herself', she avoided being struck off the teaching register following a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday. The hearing was told that she would use self-service machines, bag up her items then put her card in but remove it just before payment was taken, between April and July 2014. Ms Hunter-Brown claims it had been a ‘mistake’. She was given a conditional caution after admitting theft and was made to pay Asda compensation.
At the hearing, Ms Hunter-Brown said: “It was a mistake not to check that the payments had gone through. It was the result of personal stress in my life. “Had I been taken to a police station instead of being interviewed in the back of Asda and given time to collect my thoughts I would’ve answered differently.” Whilst on ‘Come Dine With Me’, she hosted a dinner with a Thai full-moon beach party theme, complete with a game of living-room limbo. She came third out of the five contestants with her menu of chili crab cakes, red Thai chicken curry and lemon and lime cheesecake with mango sorbet. Come Dine With Me UK TV Controversy For other meanings of "netto", see Netto (disambiguation). For other unrelated supermarket chains with the same names, see Netto (Les Mousquetaires) and Netto Marken-Discount. Netto is a Danish discount supermarket operating in Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and, via joint venture, in the United Kingdom. In August 2016, the venture came to an end, as cooperation ended with Sainsbury's.
Netto is owned by Dansk Supermarked Group, which, in turn, is 19% owned by the Maersk Group.[3] Netto also operates an express version of the store in Denmark, known as "Døgn Netto" ("(24 hour) Day Netto"). Døgn stores offer the same service as regular Netto stores, with longer opening hours and higher prices. Yellow colour show what countries Netto operates in. As of November 2014, Netto had stores in the following countries:[4] A Netto store at Lygten, in Copenhagen The first Netto store opened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1981. At first, the items sat in boxes and on pallets, but the chain quickly expanded, and the service level increased as well. Today, there are 442 stores. A Døgn Netto in Copenhagen In September 1990, Netto started an internationalisation process, and Germany was the second country to gain Netto stores. The first store was opened in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, not long after the Fall of the Wall. Netto has since expanded in the states of Brandenburg, Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein, and there are an total of more than 340 stores by December 2014.In Germany, a second chain of stores (with over 4100 stores), called Netto Marken-Discount and owned by EDEKA has also been in operation since 1984.
The two chains are unrelated to each other. The first Netto store in Poland opened in Szczecin in 1995. The expansion of the branch is concentrated in the west part of the country from Szczecin to Gdańsk (for example in Police and Stargard Szczeciński), and through the country to Bydgoszcz, Poznań, and Zielona Góra, and the country has 361 stores today. The Swedish part of Netto was founded in 2002, as an joint venture between Dansk Supermarked and ICA called Netto Marknad AB. The co operation was granted by the European Commission in 2001. The headquarters were established in Halmstad in March 2002, and the first store was opened in Trelleborg on 8 May 2002. A week later, two stores were opened in Lund. In the beginning, Netto kept their stores in the Götaland region. In August 2004, the first stores in Stockholm were opened. In October 2003, the head office moved to Falkenberg. By 2003, there were 28 stores. In 2004, there were 58 stores. In December 2007, there were 84, and in May 2009, there were 107.
In November 2006, ICA announced it was pulling out of the joint venture, reducing its stake from 50% to 5%, today ICA no longer have any stake in the company. 21 stores in the Stockholm and Västerås regions would transfer to ICA ownership with most being rebranded to ICA's own formats during 2007. The reasons for the change were problems in supplying the stores based on Netto's more southern base as well as ICA's desire to focus investment on its own formats. Netto began operating in England in Leeds, on 13 December 1990, with the company's United Kingdom headquarters being based in the ex-mining village of South Elmsall, West Yorkshire. Netto primarily expanded in central England, before moving into Southern England, namely London. In January 2005, plans for an £200 million investment in South Wales were announced, only to be cancelled. This was all due to logistical issues, resulting in the sell-off of stores in Barry and Caerphilly. 1,700 jobs were promised in the expansion, with only a few being created.
In May 2010, Netto UK was sold to Asda for £778 million, in order that Asda could increase its smaller store portfolio. The rebranding of 147 former Netto stores, under the Asda brand was complete by November 29, 2011. Competition laws required Asda to sell the remaining 47 stores to other companies, such as Morrisons, new convenience store UGO, and other retailers. In June 2014, Dansk Supermarked returned Netto to the United Kingdom, as a 50:50 joint venture with Sainsbury's. Plans called for one store will be combined with a Sainsbury's. In July 2016, the two companies announced they were ending the joint venture, and closing the stores. Mike Coupe, chief executive, said: "we have made the difficult decision not to pursue the (Netto) opportunity further, and instead focus on our core business and on the opportunities we will have, following our proposed acquisition of Home Retail Group". A Lego Netto Dog outside the Ormskirk branch. The Netto name is also used in other countries, such as Spain and France, but these stores are independent from the Scandinavian Netto.