Is Aldi/Lidl actually cheaper?

[CPHB2021]

Hello! Thinking of ways to cut our costs each month. Usually spend about £100 per week in Tesco/asda. Family of 4. Don't drink alcohol. Do you think Aldi or Lidl are genuinely cheaper and ok quality?

Lidl is cheaper but yes have to cook from scratch but I’ve got loads this week for £70 including sea bass, chicken mince, chicken breast , salmon’

salmon - we had teriyaki style with roast veg and rice

chciken mince - chicken kebabs

chicken breast - chicken curry

sea bass pan fried with veg

tomorrow jacket potatoes!

Definitely cheaper I spend on average about £80 at Aldi like for like costs about £120 at Tesco. The quality is pretty good. I don't like their mince but that's about it.

@childofthecorn There is a definite difference in the quality and the freshness :)

I’m really not sure j believe this, on a few items yes I’m sure Aldi is cheaper but this is a huge increase. What stuff are you buying?

Can't comment on Lidl but Aldi has some great products. Top of the list wine & Gin- award winning stuff for about 60% of the price at Sainsbury's. Cleaning products - great. A lot of 'continental' deli stuff - Cheese, cooked meat, yoghurt, real butter- all really good quality even though unfamiliar brands. Chocolate- Roser Moth is amazing- and their dupes of every day stuff like Twix/Mars bars. Instant (and ground) coffee. All of the 'Specially Selected' range - steak is good. At my local one the chicken went off quick and the fruit and veg was not great so I bought these elsewhere. The savings are worth the extra bit of inconvenience.

It varies from product to product, and some are cheap but not very good. Cien roll on deodorant doesn't have much longevity, for example.

Yes cheaper, meat I would say is on a par with Tesco and Asda, veg is fine but shelf life can be short. Main issue is that they don't carry as many ranges so fans of specific products can be out of luck. Lidl is my closest supermarket, walking distance, so I mostly shop there but also have 4 Gousto meals a week, I spend about £60 in total not including one main meal a week on average eaten out for 2 people.

@AlternativePerspective

Fruit and veg comes in daily to our local Lidl, well a truck comes with whatever the store requested. Manager explained to me how it worked, stock control system generates the numbers then a human reviews it

Far cheaper.

If I ever go to Tesco now I feel like I'm being mugged at the checkout!!! 😂

I find Lidl is cheaper than Aldi, and so go to Lidl and get everything on the list that I can, then pop to the other supermarket- Sainsbury or Morrison’s and get the items not available on Lidl

the following week I will shop for everything I can in Aldi and then finish if in another store

tbh Aldi usually have everything I need

I don’t like Lidl but my local Aldi is fantastic. I manage to do 95% of my shopping in there. Much cheaper than Tesco which means I can top up in M&S

But the food isn't vile. Lidl steaks, pork Belly, free range chicken, salmon are all really good. As good if not better than other supermarkets and usually British. Their dairy items are great (extra thick double cream and Greek yoghurts especially). My Lidl fruit and veg lasts far longer than other local supermarkets (I know this is store dependent). You just sound like a snob tbh (or my ex 🤨)

Why is someone a snob because they don’t like Lidl or Aldi? Food might be cheap but the quality and taste is bad.

Lidl cream cheese is the biz - like Philadelphia used to be in the 80s before they ruined it by making it too sloppy.

Your meals sound lovely can I have tge recipe for chicken kebabs please and what did you have with them?

But what regular Aldi /Lidl shoppers are telling you, is that is isn't...... Quality and taste of food from Aldi is excellent.
That isn't just anecdotal, that comes up in various consumer tests too.

I've found I only make a small saving by going to Lidl and had to be careful with what I meal planned, as they don't have the range of bigger supermarkets. Some things are really good quality, but our branch is one of the ones with poor fruit and veg so the saving isn't worth it for the extra cost in time and petrol to visit a second supermarket every week to get the rest of the shop. Some things are very poor quality, but I now know what to avoid. These days I visit Lidl every few weeks when I'm passing to stock up on cheap favourites or when there is a favourite theme week on.
I haven't been able to get on with Aldi as they don't seem to stock what I want.

I can’t buy meat from there, as soon as you open the packet of chicken , the smell of fart hits you instantaneously, I’ve no idea why that is but I have to Chuck it.

As a former Waitrose shopper, I can attest that Lidl is significantly cheaper. Waitrose have lost at least 80% of my custom.

I think their meat and fish/seafood are of similar quality, as is dairy and things like olives and hummus. I love their continental deli meats and cheeses! Oh, and the bread....... as good as Gail's at a fraction of the price. And that's before we get to the Portuguese-type custard tartlets....

The wines are pretty decent for every day too. In fact, the champagne they had at Christmas was infinitely better than the similarly priced prosecco from Waitrose.

The only things that can be a bit hit and miss are fruit and veg. But I tend to get those from the farmers market anyway.

I find it’s a false economy. Good for dry products - biscuits etc but not for fresh. Eg. Broccoli - buy on Thursday and yellow by weekend, whilst Tesco would last into next week.

I prefer Lidl and yes it is much cheaper. I am careful what I buy though; quality can be uneven. The bakery, meat and fish in our Lidl is fine. Many items are similar quality to Tesco but if you have a meal plan and want particular things you will go wrong.

pick and choose what looks good on the day.

The main issue is there is far less choice at Lidl. I would say, don’t go with a list. Go with an open mind and buy what looks good, build your meal plan in your head as you go around that as you go round the shop.

There are some items I strongly prefer from Lidl and there is always something interesting in the frozen section. i tend to buy opportunistically in Lidl as their range is limited but occasionally they will stock something random at a good price that has a great shelf life so I end up buying a couple to store. This obviously means it messes up my budgeting and fills up my cupboards but it saves a lot of money across the whole year.

once every three weeks I go to Tesco to get the things I cannot buy in Lidl. There are some branded foods and my DH’s deodorant we apparently “can’t live without” 🤨

@Katya213 this made me laugh. I tend to avoid big packs of cheap chicken pieces for this reason, have switched to frozen Quorn. Honestly does just as good a job for most meals and it is much cheaper to buy and cooks faster, so you need less of our expensive gas/electricity to cook it.

I think it is the smell of chicken blood in those packs? (which you can carefully rinse off but still does smell weird) My Lidl does free range chicken - two breasts feed four people easily I guess because it isn’t injected full of water so it doesn’t shrink away to nothing. It is very expensive but defo worth it and doesn’t smell!

Tbh waitrose and Ocado have always been extortionately expensive so a comparison with Aldi really doesn’t mean that much.

I think they are cheaper and, like any supermarket, you try stuff and see if you like it. Lidl has really good wine, baked goods and deli stuff but we weren't keen on some of the frozen things, like pies. Aldi frozen good are better I think. Some of their food is really good and we don't have a problem with the fruit and veg so perhaps that's store dependent. We can't do a complete shop there though so top up at other supermarkets once a month or so. Tesco club card deals really bring the price down.

@Kite22 As I said further up the thread, the quality of fruit and veg at Aldi is absolutely appalling. Many times we got home and realised the fruit was mouldy. If it lasted that long, it had gone bad the day after! At Morrisons, we have fruit that is way past the best before date and is still edible.