To think you don't need shops like Lidl/Aldi

[PisforPeter]

If you can buy a chicken to serve 5-6 in Waitrose for £2.94??
I also get 450g minced beef for £2.20. They have lots of special offers on at the moment.
I honestly think if you take advantage of offers and cook mostly from first principals you can still be very frugal in Waitrose/Sainsburys.

Our cats will only eat Aldi catfood (little square trays) now.

I bought whiskas for them last week and the bastards won't eat it. I'll probably end up sending it to the Cats Protection rescue centre down the road, or the food bank (for cats, obviously).

OP, do you think that Waitrose is the only 'acceptable' supermarket (or Sainsburys if you are stuck in some backwards hellhole that doesn't have a Waitrose)? And if anyone 'has' to go elsewhere, its an unbelievable hardship?

I actually like Aldi and it's products and not just because it's cheaper.

Yes Waitrose is nice, but I spend on average twice as much there and they checkouts are glacially slow if you are used to the speed of Aldi. I find myself in the queue resisting the urge to shout at them for being so slow, it's excrutiating.

What's up with Aldi and Lidl? The last time I bought a Waitrose chicken - which didn't come close to feeding 5 of us - it was awful, as was a lot of the other meat I got with the delivery. The quality of food from there seems to have nosedived recently, Aldi and Lidl are much better. Closer too.
Are Waitrose getting worried by any chance?

If they weren't needed, they wouldn't still be open.

I find Aldi and Lidl VERY cost effective. Mostly because I go in with a list of 20 items and can only find 10 of them

I do wonder. You're right. Why walk to Aldi when I can get a couple of buses to Waitrose/Sainsburys to spend a bit more

I want shops like Aldi. Your cheap chicken isn't going to lure me over to Waitrose

Erm no. You stay at waitrose and sainsburys with your chicken and mince. I'll stay at aldi and lidl which are local to me and don't cost the earth.

I got 900g of steak mince at Tesco yesterday for 84p can I have a prize?

We don't actually 'need' any shops.... if only everyone would go back to the barter system.

The type of meat I tend to buy is cheaper in M&S than Sainsburys (and Sainsburys doesn't sell outdoor reared pork shoulder, while M&S does). If i couldn't afford either of those, I'd rather buy the quality of meat on offer in Aldi than the basic supermarket stuff.

So by your logic, OP, I could argue that I don't see the point of the big 4 supermarkets selling meat.

The fact is, if there really wasn't a "need" for any business, then it wouldn't be viable and the shops concerned wouldn't exist.

Not that we could ever really afford to shop on Waitrose regularly, but I prefer Aldi to the larger supermarkets. I find shopping less stressful as there is less choice, so I don't have to be constantly calculating which products are the best value. It takes us twenty minutes to do a weeks shopping. I waste less food and cook more from scratch so we have eaten better since we started shopping there and it's much, much cheaper. Plus I love the random special buys!

We do shop elsewhere for the odd bits and do chase offers but you can't do that for every single item unless you have an unlimited amount of time and shop for very few people.

If nobody 'needed' Aldi or Lidl, Pisforpeter, they wouldn't exist, would they?

In my experience, Waitrose is more expensive than either the normal supermarkets (Tesco/Sainsburys/Morrisons/ASDA), and more expensive than Aldi nd Lidl, over a full weekly shop, even if some things are cheaper (loss leaders, as another poster has said).

I love lidl and aldi
I actually shop there through choice
Not because I can't afford to shop anywhere else
I like how m getting quality but paying less
I like how theres not much choice
I love how I can Chuck anything in my trolley and not have to worry about if I can afford it or not
I actually feel sorry for snobs who can't possibly go to aldi or lidl in case they catch the 'common'

Ditto insancerre. Almost to the letter

My fave is to go to one then the other.
Coffee and lardons from lidl
Nappies and wine from aldi
Done.

And if we're going food snob here, I try to buy as much meat from a local butcher.
That is incomparable to any supermarket meat.

I read somewhere recently about supermarket sales over Christmas, must down by a few percent - apart from Aldi and Lidl which were up 28% or something close to that .....that would indicate a lot of people disagree with you OP.

Our local Aldi is always busy - used to be a ghost shop until the credit crunch. So I guess it is needed.

I remember an article a while back that attributed Tescos difficulties to Lidl/Aldi/poundstores.

So actually I think we did and do need these shops, because they keep the giants in check.

As someone who has mostly fruit and veg in her trolley and meat maybe once a week lidl and aldi are significantly cheaper and better quality produce then my local sainsbury's, tesco and asda - plus I can afford a little treat of olives or hummus and still spend less.

I used to be a waitrose shopper but am a committed lidl/aldi girl now.

I like Waitrose OP

YAB double U. Maybe more. Nobody particularly needs any branded shop - certainly I'd say that on balance people need the likes of Aldi and Lidl to counteract the exorbitant prices at the others. For some people shopping at Aldi/Lidl is the difference between eating well and not - so do take a minute to explain WHY you have your smug little opinion and then if you've any time left you can tell us why you made this post.

I could shop in Sainburys for the same price as I do in aldis

The difference is big supermarkets value items are pure crap.

AldI and Lidl are great for a quick top up shop. The quality and price are good.

They even sell fruit yoghurt. I mean proper fruit yoghurt. Not low fat watery yoghurt, not prebiotic doesn't survive the digestive system yoghurt, faffy corner yoghurt, not super creamy overpriced dessert sensation yoghurt, just actual fruit flavour yoghurt which is a rarity in the major chains.

I started because of the nappies and they've got much of what I want.

Same here Thursday. I'm lucky enough to live near two really great farm shops. One is vair naice, but still the same or cheaper than supermarket meat, apart from the really cheap stuff.

One is cheaper and a bit 'wholesale' eg you can buy normal amounts or buy 10 pound bags of steak, sausages or steak mince at a discount for example. All really great quality and fantastic for BBQs.

I don't get to Lidl as often as I'd like as they're furthest away (but still not that far, its just I have to pass pretty much all the other supermarkets to get there) but there's a few sites locally that Tesco are selling off due to their decline, so I'm hoping at least one will be a Lidl. Their fresh bakery stuff is amazing and their DeLuxe range is absolutely top notch.

I think Aldi and Lidl do sometimes need to catch up with their stock control though. The Aldi I use most often runs out of onions . I actually got to a Lidl on Saturday and was excited to find they had my favourite cheese twists, which had previously sold out. They didn't have any bloody milk at all though. Admittedly it was 4 pm on a Saturday, but still.