People wanting to save some money on their food shopping bills usually head for the supermarkets, tempted by the retail giants' widely advertised discounts.

People wanting to save some money on their food shopping bills usually head for the supermarkets, tempted by the retail giants' widely advertised discounts.

But a Norfolk farm shop is championing the cause of the small shops and hopes to beat one supermarket chain at its own game by undercutting the prices of many of the products in the Dereham branch of Tesco.

Yaxham Waters Farm Shop has started doing a daily price check at Tesco and has spread the word about how much cheaper the Yaxham shop often is compared to its supermarket rival by distributing about 2,500 leaflets throughout Yaxham, Mattishall, East Tuddenham and Welborne.

On Saturday, some of the price checks revealed that an iceberg lettuce cost 85p at the Yaxham shop compared to �1.18 at Tesco, a lemon cost 15p compared to 30p at the supermarket, and 1kg of bananas cost 88p compared to 95p at Tesco.

Pablo Dimoglou, who owns the farm shop with Timothy Hay, said that since he began doing the daily price checks in December the amount of people shopping a Yaxham Waters has trebled. He said his price checks also show if Tesco is slightly cheaper for some products because he wants his checks to be fair and accurate.

He said: “People have had in their minds for the past 15 years that supermarkets are the cheapest place to get food and we want to change this. We feel a lot of smaller shops are avoided by people because people think they are going to get charged a lot, but we are concentrating on keeping the margins very, very tight so that, for example, instead of having a box of carrots sitting there for days we can sell it quickly because it is a very good price. We realise it is difficult economic times and people have to be careful with their money, and we appreciate every single pound people spend here.”

He said the shop, which is part of a larger project involving a coffee shop, holiday lodge and caravan park, was not trying to be a supermarket but wanted to encourage shoppers to support local farmers and businesses by visiting the farm shop first and then fill in the gaps in their shopping list by going to a supermarket.

Mr Dimoglou said among the local produce at the shop were parsnips and carrots from Watton Produce, potatoes, apples, and pork and stilton pies from Yaxham, and eggs from the Wayland area.

Mr Dimoglou, who opened the farm shop in August, said he also planned to set up a campaign supporting local businesses. As well as offering low prices Mr Dimoglou also started up a free Monday afternoon delivery service for people living in Yaxham, Mattishall, East Tuddenham and Welborne last month for which there is no minimum order required.

A spokesman for Tesco said: “Clearly the winners here will be the customers across the area. It is good to have healthy competition.”

To order food for a Monday delivery from Yaxham Waters Farm Shop, call 01362 696750.