Aldi Newbie

[Pupsiecola]

Recovering Waitrose shopper here. Just paid a visit to the new, large Aldi store nearby. Felt like I walked around mouth open the entire time. Wow. Those prices! We're a family of 4 (including 2 teenage boys) spending around £1k a month in Waitrose. I'm hoping to get that down to £600 to £700. We're health concscious, and animal welfare is important. I'm curious as to how they can sell stuff so cheaply. I worry about this in relation to the meat, but also the labels I've not heard of. I wasn't expecting organic milk and eggs. I guess I need to compare labelling info with the usual brands?

What's good/what should I avoid?

TY

You spend £1,000 a month on FOOD?! That's my monthly take home pay! I know it's all relative but fml...

It's cheaper because costs are lower in other areas. Like the checkouts.

They sell items cheaply mostly because they only stock one brand of product so rather than say Tesco who stock their own brand plus multiple names brands. As far as I am aware all their meat is farm assured and they display the red tractor so it not imported and livestock is looked after. We are a couple soon to be a family of 3 and can easily spend £40 or less on food from Aldi and Lidl quite happily!

Have a look at the long, long, recent thread on packing/not packing at the till! The prices are cheap partly through low staff numbers and getting shoppers through quickly. Something I noticed recently too, is that the layout of the goods has never changed since I started shopping at the local Aldi, so once you know, you never have to hunt round for things. Also the choice is much smaller so you don't take so long to decide. I could never do all my shopping there, but it is great for most stuff.

You can get most things in there but also be prepared to do a small shop elsewhere as they do not stock everything. Eg i went in for disinfectant and they do not sell it. Cleaning products yes if course they sell but not disinfectant.
I havent done a whole shop there usually go for a top up shop.

We spend £40 a week in Aldi, I do meal plan though.
Their bread products are good - crumpets and brioche rolls.The Multigrain sliced loaf is as good as leading brands.
Parmasan cheese, soft cream cheese. Norpack butter
White & Red wine vinegars
Minced beef, chicken sausages, smoked pancetta - cheap and good quality
Olive oil, I get the Greek one.
Salmon wellington is yummy (freezer section)
Veg is good but I find it goes off super quick.

And the onions are very small!

What's good/what should I avoid?

Well, the carrots in the third bin along are excellent, but I find sometimes the turnips are contaminated by peasant-hands from all the poor people who've touched them before you.

The tea loaf is delicious, but no one has ever bought any of the other baked goods. Ever. It's all in Aldi's business model, selling food no one likes.

You spend £1,000 a month on FOOD?!

Food and all other household type stuff. Yes . Maybe less some months depending on if we need the pricier stuff such as dw tablets, laundry detergent etc.

The dishwasher tablets are very good, Which? are impressed by them. Something to watch out for; boxes of foods on the shelf often contain two different types. This is how I have come home with horseradish sauce instead of tartare. You really have to check that you have picked up the item you wanted. I cannot grasp why they do that.

Be prepared to do a top up shop somewhere else though. I can't get frozen sweetcorn in either my Aldi or Lidl. Plus a few other random things like course sea salt. However, we've cut our shopping budget from maybe £75/week down to £55.

@HowlsMovingBungalow is right about the multigrain bread, it's delicious.

Give things a try and I've got a list running on my phone where I put what things we like at Lidl and what we like at Aldi

How the heck does someone spend £1k a MONTH on groceries!!!!!

I love Aldi. In no particular order I like the chocolate, their coffee (hazelnut one is nice), the Fishcakes with sauce in the middle, all their cheeses, the pizzas in the fresh section, their root vegetable crisps, the garlic olive oil, their gin and their Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc wine. The only things we didn’t rate were tea and ketchup, everything else was a hit! We do our weekly shop for us and 2 kids for £60 or so, £70 if we have a few more treats. I love it, I never look at the trolley and think “how did we spend that much?” like I used to at Sainsburys.

You can get organic milk, eggs, potatoes, carrots and onions in Aldi. You can also get free range chicken and Aberdeen Angus beef.

Their fillet steaks are brilliant.

As is their seeded bloomer bread.

i switched to Aldi about 7 years ago and havent looked back!

I don't rate their white wine but others rave over it. They have organic wine too.

I have found their Cling film, baking paper and tin foil to be good quality.

They also stock decent flour on occasions - 00 type was a hit for pizza bases in our house.

I even got cider vinegar in our branch £1.99, local healthfood shop sells it for £5.99 ...

Unfortunately they recently changed their pasta salads - spinach and pine nuts and tomato orzo - and they are now vile! But much of the rest is good - cereals, bakery, chocolate, yogurts, cheese, and the booze - their own brand gin is more than drinkable!

I rarely go in Waitrose now. We buy Aldi's 5% mince, free range chicken, butchers select pork sausages, bacon, whatever fruit and veg I need at the time, tinned fruit, floor wipes, washing up liquid, laundry stuff, free range eggs, filtered milk, wine, part cooked bread, cashew nuts, foil, toilet roll, squeezy tubes of garlic, chilli etc.

I find that some Aldi stuff is better quality than Waitrose - particularly their desserts which are amazing! Their moser roth chocolate is also very good - better than Green and Blacks IMO. If there is any fudge left in the Christmas aisle get some of that.

I still go to Waitrose for cheese from the counter and their basmati rice - not much else though.

Prue Leith switched from Daylesford Organic steaks to Aldi steaks.

Some brilliant tips there. Thank you so much. I generally only buy organic milk, eggs, chicken, yoghurt and cheese. Don't usually buy organic fruit and veg. I reckon I can get our monthly spend down to under £700. That's my goal and if I can manage that I'll be chuffed. I'm hoping the laundry detergent is okay. Most types give me eczema on my elbows and hips (weird!) so I have to be very careful, but at a third of the price I'm happy to give it a go! Bought a random few bits today to try. Will make a note of what we like and what we don't!

Thanks again for all the helpful nuggets.

A grand a month on food? How have you not ended up on Eat Well For Less yet?

They've got their Christmas booklet out OP, theres some really nice bits and bobs in it. I'm a bit of a food snob, and would love to spend £££ in Waitrose but Aldi is a gamechanger if you meal plan and cook from scratch.

To those questioning how much we spend on groceries ... we can afford it, although obviously, by the very fact that I've posted, it would be nice to save some of that money!

We don't really drink (DH likes red wine, I like white, so we probably have 2 of those tiny bottles per month each). We don't eat fancy meals. If I'm buying chicken breasts I'll buy organic - in Waitrose that's around £10 for a pack of 4. We get through a fair amount of organic milk and organic yoghurt. I can get through a box of 12 eggs in a week - again organic. We don't eat a lot of fruit, although I do buy berries all year round because, well, we all like them and they're healthy. I get through a lot of (non-organic) veg. A head of broccoli and a bag of carrots is gone in a couple of days. We don't eat a lot of red meat. I usually get the 3 x packs of Duchy beef mince for a tenner offer which is good value for the quality. I try to batch cook.

I don't love cooking and am not very adventurous. Most of our recipes are from either the BBC Good Food website or The Body Coach books. We're all fit and healthy and all work out. We all do weight training, and the teenage DSs have very healthy appetites!

The DCs and I all take packed lunches and I buy good quality meat for these, because it's important to us on many levels, and as I said we can afford it. DH works from home often. In all our packed lunches we have chopped up peppers, cucumber and grapes: a 3 pack of different coloured peppers/one cucumber/a pack of grapes lasts us 1.5 days (none of this is organic). Bagels - 2 packs a week. We have soft drinks (diet coke and squash).

The washing machine is on daily and whist I buy Waitrose own brand detergent, it's still expensive (I am really hoping my skin is okay with the Aldi one).

It just all adds up. And I do think that if you shop at Waitrose it does that very quickly!

A grand a month on food? How have you not ended up on Eat Well For Less yet?

Never heard of it. I'll check it out! Thanks.

Onions are small pretty much everywhere, because of the hot summer.