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.

I love the fact that after decades of selfish capitalism and constantly increasing levels of choice we crave for the limited choice favoured by (or imposed on) the Eastern Bloc Communists.

Eastern Bloc Communists

eh?

If you had ever been to a shop in the Former Eastern Bloc you would understand. They were like Lidl with most of the stock taken out.

They were like Lidl with most of the stock taken out.

So your comparison was not correct.
Aldi and Lidl have quality and available choice far above what the Communist shops carried. The shelves are crammed - no queues waiting outside the shops in all weathers for a few plain items to arrive.

Whoever decided we want all this choice anyway? Tesco especially are always saying 'we do what our customers want'.well it would appear that an increasing number of people don't want to have to choose from 30 different types of tinned tomatoes. The 3 or 4 types that Aldi offer are sufficient.

I have been to shops in the DDR in the 80s.

3 kinds of parma ham and lobster and champagne they did not sell

I did a huge shop at Aldi this week.
Got home, put it until that supermarket comparison app. (Because I'm a saddo.)

The £120 shop was just over £200 at Waitrose.

Sallyingforth I think you're missing my point.

I'm just saying it's very very strange that after our capitalist obsession with new products, more products, better products, many of us are relieved to be able to go round a shop in 20 minutes and do the weekly shop without having to wade through 362 different types of hair conditioner.

Even Tesco are going to reduce choice as an active strategy in order to save money on shelf-stackers they say, but we all know it's because most of us are so baffled wandering through their huge stores we end up not going back in and do Lidl instead. Someone mentioned Raiders of The Lost Ark up-thread.

Tesco don't need to save money they need to stop taking so much profit and using it to buy up smaller shops.

Cottage,
Everything you have said in that last post is correct.
It was your analogy with the communist shops that was incorrect.