to think Aldi isn't that brillinat?

[ssd]

maybe I just haven't got into the hang of it yet, but I've been going for a while now, and whilst some of it is a lot cheaper than say asda, I just find some of their stuff not that great and I'm having to go to asda to buy it again

anyone else like that?

The Special pizzas are lovely, frozen ones too.

I can walk to ASDA, with my granny trolley - takes 2 buses there and 2 buses home to get to ALDI - logistically, and environmentally I'll stick with ASDA.

soft fruit goes off too soon,but muesli is great. prices are always good.

I can't say I thought much to the pizzas at all tbh

Bland and soggy.

I like Aldi and I like their prices even more.

I can get a weeks shop there. I shop simple as I prepare and cook 99% from fresh produce. Their fruit & veg is good quality, meat, fish and chicken ok too. Rice, pasta & noodles as good as anywhere else.

What I do struggle with is the check out. But staff being performance monitored/rated is what keeps their prices down.

walrus what can you not get??

Dont know about walrus but for me this week:

Golden caster sugar, Schwartz chargrilled chicken spice, roast potato seasoning, Make you own pizzas, Mullerlight greek yoghurts, weightwatchers yoghurts, baking paper (mine used to but stopped).

I however do like Aldi and go there first and then go somewhere else for everything that I cant get there.

Our Aldi is great value and had a lot of good quality products including its meat, cold meat and cheeses, biscuits, cleaning products and fruit and veg. The issue with fruit and veg is its often already ripe, not underripe like elsewhere. I sometimes wonder that there milk is not as fresh as it should be though. Chocolate quite good. Dominion brand sweets are an abomination! I don't know if they are perhaps more a franchise model more than a straight supermarket and so there is large variation between stores. They need to rush you through check out - that's partly why they can offer lower prices. You aren't meant to take time packing at the till.

Thank you for the tip Salty though why would you be pleased that the best flavour, black ones, has been replaced by something so evil? Not on my watch.

We've just got a new Aldi, it's huge. We'be used Aldi in the past, this saves a 13 mile drive.

We've never had a problem with veg, fruit, meat or fish going off. The vast majority of what we buy we've liked. We don't like their tinned soups or their beetroot crisps, but that's not due to quality that's due to taste.

DS1(22) is in the army and is really fussy about what he eats. He and his mate have been shopping at Aldi for about 2 years. They buy steaks, chicken, tuna steaks, venison steaks, Greek yoghurt etc. They never go anywhere else. I'm forever getting texts telling me what he's just had and how much he recommends it.

I find their washing up liquid, the one that looks like Fairy Platinum, excellent. I use their colour washing liquid and I like their more expensive fabric softener. We've bought some shampoo and toiletries to try so we'll see how we go with that.

We can definitely do a full weeks shop there.

Only shopped occasionally at Aldi as there isn't one near me.
However I love Lidl, do all my shopping there.

I love Aldi and have always found their pork loin delicious. I get most of my shopping there, but go to Farmfoods for dishwasher tablets, liquitabs, loo and kitchen rolls. I pop to Asda every couple of months for my shampoo/conditioner and teabags. I'm definitely saving money and time.

I have tried to get on with Aldi, but I am another who didn't quite make it.

I did love their specially selected lemon and mascarpone cheesecake and raspberry roulade. I would buy those again, and Moser Roth chocolate.

Fruit and vegetables seems very hit or miss though. I have known them go very manky in just a couple of days.

Then there is the scrum to get through the tills. I have seen it likened to an Olympic event. Speed is everything there. Which is fine, but for people with some injuries or medical issues (hidden or otherwise), it can be more challenging. I have a compromised right arm which broke a year ago and may now never fully heal. It makes it difficult for me to cope with the speed expected at the tills unless DH is with me.

So now I largely shop at Tesco again. A mix of home delivery and visits to the store.

Some of you have mentioned problems with a lack of meat on the shelves, or running out of other produce, and some of the fruit and veg going off quickly. You must be unlucky with your branch then because in ours, the fruit & veg is as fresh as can be, and I've never known them run out of meat, bread, milk etc.

Perhaps it is more to do with the management of particular branches? Our local Aldi is great.

Love my local Aldi, and can do my weekly shop only there no problem. Fruit and veg far better quality than our Tesco, laundry liquid is the best I've found, and the meat has all been fantastic. I cook mainly from scratch, so I can easily get everything I need really cheap.
The first time I went, however, was about 10 years ago, and it was awful! There was never the stuff you needed on the shelves, the meat looked horrid...it seemed to cater for ready meals and snacks. They have improved massively, though, and I've been a regular for about 3 years now. The staff isn't warm and fuzzy, but I don't need that...i want to get in and out, not stand around talking shite!

I don't see the appeal. I've tried a couple of times and bar a few items it's just basic range stuff.
The fruit and veg is grim from both stores in my town. I went to one on opening day and some veg was rotten on the shelves. It had only been open two hours. I can buy a big bag of giant peppers from Costco that last more than a week. The Aldi ones were tiny and every one had a mushy patch on the day I bought them. I even used that stupid code they have.

Most of the meat looks grim, I tried a free range chicken and a couple of steaks. The chicken was more expensive than my butcher and tough as old boots and the steak was fatty, tasteless and no cheaper than Morrisons.

I do find most of the stuff people recommend to me is ready meals, frozen stuff, cooking sauces and junk type food, which we don't really buy/isn't worth going especially for.

So much of the stuff contains peanut/nut traces so not good for our nut free household.

I like some of the cheese, the nappies but not pull ups, one type of cracker and the dark chocolate.

I wonder if people just have different standards? I don't have an Aldi or a Lidl anywhere near me, so my visits have been confined to holidays etc. I also found the fruit, veg and salad stuff well below par, but to be honest, I have the same problem when I visit Tesco as well (there isn't one of those near me either!). But I am a bit fanatical about freshness - something that goes off in a couple of days in my fridge has clearly spent far too much time in storage.

I wasn't impressed with the cheese either although the prices were amazing. It seemed to be very similar to the stuff in Costco and I don't rate that either. Mass-produced and tastless, good for cooking with, probably fine for bulk catering with, but not for putting on a cracker.

The cold meat was OK. I obviously need to try the beef one day!

Aldi is a bit hit and miss for us - two of us are gluten free and we were happy when they trialled a range but they discontinued it. Our Morrisons is actually brilliant for gluten free options so we tend to go there. I love the thought of M&S but tend to only pick up select bits from there that we really like as it seems really expensive at the moment.

She wasn't just unforthcoming SoupDragon. She, um, barked orders at people.

YANBU. I actually found out I saved more money when I stopped shopping there! I had a tendency to stock up on things lured by the low price just to find my family ended up not liking what I got. The worst thing I bought was spicy buffalo sweet potato fries- barf! I now only go there for cat litter (brilliant and cheap) lovely chocolate, and milk and eggs.

Your Aldi (and Lidl) doesn't sound much like mine OP.
I love Aldi for tasty bacon that's not full of added water, fab chocolates, lemon curd flavour yoghurt, ice-cream that's much better than Hagen Daz, goose fat Yorkshire puds, organic veg, 49cent fruit & veg specials, decent curry sauces, etc.
I love Lidl for their instore bakery with great breads, light donuts that taste as good as crispy creme donuts, fruit and veg offers, etc.
The staff in both stores are all friendly and open another till as soon as a queue begins to form.
For the rest of my shopping, I'll nip to the local SuperValu which offers an amazing range of locally sourced food.
When we first moved here, I thought I'd miss Waitrose and Tesco, but they're not a patch on what's available locally plus the incredible Saturday farmers market which is all year round and has talented singers, story tellers, and musicians entertaining us during the summer months. Plus the tastiest burger stalls ever. (RIP Frankie).

I do find most of the stuff people recommend to me is ready meals, frozen stuff, cooking sauces and junk type food, which we don't really buy/isn't worth going especially for

People seem to recommend the fresh meat too. However it always tasted funny to me.

Steak was really watery as was the chicken. And tasted of nothing. The frozen salmon fillets tasted like no salmon I'd ever had. Ditto tinned tuna.

The ketchup and salad cream have a really odd texture and do not taste anything like heinz. Far to vinegary.

The mince would have loads of liquid cone off it and tastes really gritty same applies to lidl too. Weirdest tasting meats.

The frozen battered fish were the Weirdest combination of soggy dry stodgy greasy and the fish was a weird grey colour. Even kids didn't eat them and they will happily eat the shit served as a kids meal in a pub/restaurant.

The peppers never taste sweet and juicy either. Just kinda non descript.

I tried the pizzas too after hearing about how good they were. Rank.even the stone baked posh ones.

The beans have no right to call themselves baked beans.

Believe it or not I did like aldi at first. Shopped there for months.

There has been a definite decline in quality, taste, the stock available (or not available) and the process are no longer that competitive.

Yes Giles I used to shop there once too, amazing how you can change your mind after a while. I had the same experience of peppers being tasteless. And on two occasions (out of 4 different ones) they were actually rotten inside. The rest of the veg often looked old I agree, or they had run out of stock on so much of it. I used to like the ham, but then the quality fell in my opinion. I don't like all their cheap bread, cakes, biscuits that jam the shelves or frozen readymeals. In the end, the only temptation for me was the wine and the frozen apple tarts - and I'm not gonna queue up for 10-15 minutes in a stressful check-out, holding my breath to see if I can get it in the bag as fast as the check out person scans it. Plus of course not being able to get loads of stuff as ranges so narrow. Moved on (deep breath) to other supermarkets and its so much easier.

I didn't even like the wine

And I can't taste a difference in wines usually. But they were all like paint stripper..

I'll always be happy to pay a bit more to not have my shopping thrown at me by an angry Polish woman. Maybe that's just my local one.

I find it's incredibly hit and miss (but mostly miss). The aluminium foil is great, as is their not-from-concentrate juice, my DH likes some of their free range meat and bread, and the chocolate is wonderful!

The fruit and vegetables are often rotting on the shelves, even when it's just been put out, and because of the stupid labeling system they have it's quite tricky to tell when the best before dates are anyway. The washing powder, household cleaning stuff and toiletries are beyond dreadful, and it bugs the crap it off me that my in laws ONLY use Aldi's. When we had our first baby my FIL gave me my DH's old baby blankets and they were filthy, despite him telling me he'd given them a good wash (seriously, they were black!!). I have them a wash in my usual powder and the blankets came out beautifully white, like new! They'd been in my machine only a few minutes and the water was so murky. Eww! 0 out of 10, Aldi!