No frills

No-frills or no frills is the term used to describe any service or product for which the non-essential features (or frills) have been removed. An example is free drinks on airline journeys. Common products and services for which no-frills brands exist include airlines, supermarkets & holidays. They operate on the principle that if you take away the frills, you get lower prices.

No-frills supermarkets

No-frills supermarkets are recognisable by their store design and business model.

• 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 is 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, or buy shopping bags at a low fee i.e. 3p/5c.
• They work on the principle that in most supermarket, 20% of products on sale account for 80% of what people buy. So they only stock the most commonly sold products.
• They only take cash and debit cards.
• They only open at peak times i.e. 0900-1800 Monday to Saturday.
• They usually do not serve branded items.
• The trolleys have a coin-operated slot, to ensure that the trolleys are kept on site.

Examples of no-frills supermarkets are:

• Lidl (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands & United Kingdom)
• Aldi (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Spain, The Netherlands, USA, & United Kingdom)
• No-Frills (Canada)
• Norma (Germany)
• Bonus (Iceland)
• Netto (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland)
• Cassa (part of the K-Kauppa chain) (Finland)
• Alepa (part of the S-market chain) (Finland)

No frills airlines

No-frills airlines are airlines that offers low fares but eliminate all unnecessary services. See low-cost carrier for further details.

No-frills holiday

No-frills holidays are holidays which, like no-frills airlines, do not include unnecessary services such as:

• in-flight meals
• travel representatives
• transfers between the airport and the hotel
• entertainment
• luxury accommodation

Such holidays usually have a simple fare scheme, in which fares typically increase during peak seasons, and also as more people sign up for the holiday. This rewards early reservations, and is known as "yield management".

Examples of no-frills holiday companies are:

• Just, part of the Thomson/TUI group.

Other no-frills companies

Other examples of no-frills companies include cinemas (easyCinema), bus companies (easyBus, Megabus), food ranges (Tesco Value, Wal-mart/Asda SmartPrice), mobile phone companies (easyMobile, Telmore) and hotels (easyHotel, Hotel Formule 1, Holiday Inn).