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?

I don’t like shopping in there. The veg and fruit really did go off really quickly every time I have tried. I actually do try again every 6 months or so, as some people rave about it.

And tbh I just think it isn’t as good quality as elsewhere. Many items had palm oil in instead of butter, higher sugar content, more ‘preservatives’. Jam less fruit content, shortbread left tastes slimey but dry weirdly
Cat good low quality, and the toiletries just all smelt really ‘chemically’

Nut allergy and lactose free family here, I find also harder in there. Ie I can buy a nut free chocolate spread, nut free granola, nut free kids oat bars etc easily in other stores but struggle there.
All chocolate in there ‘May contain peanuts’, lindt is the only peanut free factory.

I did a weekend shop this morning in Lidl. I got:
3 x pain au chocolate
A Portuguese nata
Chestnut mushrooms
Large sweet potato
Extra mature cheddar
A whole fresh chicken
Deluxe shortbread (best bought shortbread I've tried)
1/2 crispy duck
9 frozen mini jambons
2 x egg fried rice pouches
4 x Kids smoothies
1 litre cloudy Apple juice
6 x individual multi vit drinks
A bottle of pinot gris

It was £26.😁

In my opinion, no. They sell some cheap stuff but the quality is generally low, and they don't always have everything. I try it every now and again and am always disappointed, especially the fruit and veg which goes off so quickly. I don't even want to think where they source their meat from.
You'd be better off buying supermarket own-brand groceries, cheap seasonal fruit & veg, and meal planning.

ALDI meat, especially the steaks tends to be higher quality than most other supermarkets. The fruit and veg seems to vary by store. Their deli stuff is in most cases superior to other supermarkets as is their own brand chocolate. Not pumped full off palm oil. Ready made stuff is inferior though, especially ready made salads and dips.

My friend works in the factory. Specifically, the same conveyor of fruit & veg gets diverted between M&S or Aldi. Can't comment for Lidl.

It's comments like this which are quite clearly nonsense.

"It tastes nasty". Every single item in Lidl/Aldi is vile and tastes "nasty". Everything from the cereal, to the frozen fish, to the Wensleydale cheese to the tortilla chips. All of it - nasty and vile.

It's like any shop. Some of the stuff is brilliant, other stuff you won't like. We have a shiny new Aldi near here and it's a pleasure to shop in - wide aisles and spotlessly clean. I have never had a problem with fruit and veg spoiling quickly, but with 3 teenagers in the house things don't last long anyway.

If you ever watch programmes like Eat Well for Less the often do taste tests, I think this year it was salsa dips, the one which came out top in blind testing was the cheapie Lidl one, beating Doritos and other branded salsa. Shopping in Lidl/Aldi is ALL about keeping an open mind and being prepared to try things. And basics like pasta, cheese, milk, cornflakes - people kid themselves they can tell the difference, but can't really.

@TooBigForMyBoots I liked how specific your post was so out of curiosity I put that shop into the Tesco app and got £26.01! Had to swap the jambons though and get 4 pain au chocolats and 2 custard tarts instead because of different items being available. Obviously also depends on packet sizes which may be bigger or smaller/which exact wine etc. I do think it massively depends what you normally buy. In Tesco the crispy duck is £7 which seemed expensive to me, we can't buy duck though as I don't want to upset our pet ducks! 😁

Don't believe the Aldi/M & S conveyor belt story. A friend of ours is a manager in a factory which provides food for a few supermarkets and when they do M & S they stop everything and clean down then proceed with M & S.
I shop mostly in Aldi but buy fruit and veg in M & S because the quality is so much better and lasts longer, it is more expensive but well worth it. Marks have the first choice of potatoes (and other veg I presume) because they pay more and pass this on to customers.

What are frozen jambons?

i shop mainly in Tesco as I haven't got the time to get the bits I can't get in Aldi/Lidl because they've not got it in stock. On hols at the moment so shopped in Lidl. No broccoli!

Im also a farmer. M&S audit us with their own special auditor to make sure we adhere to their standard. They are also incredibly ethical in terms of the way they treat us. Lidl/Aldi et Al dont have long term producer relationships. As such they buy a lot of their stuff on the open market (as opposed to M&S who for example promise to buy our beef/eggs/chicken). Hence when the open market is in short supply you see gaps in their shelves that you don't see in the more expensive supermarkets.

I use aldi and it is cheaper for everyday shopping.

If it's a special occasion I use m and s fruit and veg as you can taste the difference in my opinion.

If I could afford to shop at m and s for all my food then I absolutely would but I can't so I dont.

I do like the m and s posh dogs though. Not found a cheaper brand that is the same yet. If anyone can recommend I am all ears.

I wish I could switch to quoin but my child just won’t eat it and insists on chicken. The smell just makes me ill.

Your post made me laugh out loud. No way is the fruit and veg in Aldi or Lidl the same as in M&S.

Aldi is the worst but Lidl is not much better. Maybe it varies from shop to shop but having shopped in 4 different Aldi's in Essex, 3 in London, 1 in Kent and 3 in Lincolnshire and every one of them having terrible fruit and veg I refuse to buy it there any more.

A while ago I needed mushrooms for a recipe. The closest shop was Aldi. All the packs of mushrooms looked pretty bad but I chose the one that looked the best. Got it home and the ones under the top ones were slimy and even mouldy.

I have been buying mushrooms probably every week for the last 40 years from all the main supermarkets and have never ever had slimy and mouldy ones before

Sorry but that simply isn't true.

I’m sorry I cannot agree about their meat, we got a rancid turkey one year and their chicken stinks to high heaven.

That's not true either.

I have tried lidls in a few places and their fruit and veg are awful, goes of within a couple of days

I had a bad experience with Lidl broccoli - cooked the same day as bought and was already 'off'. But I have always found their meat to be excellent; ditto their deli products and rye bread.

And the bakery is horrible , leaves nasty greasy feel in your mouth

Its cheaper because there is so little choice you buy less, but a lot of it isnt that great

broccoli changes colour if it is "off" so you would see that before you purchased it??

It looked OK but tasted rank.

I don’t like the bakery after I witnessed a huge green bottle fly on one of the doughnuts which grossed me out and the next time I was in there a child dropped a croissant on the floor and the man she was with told her to pick it up and put it back 🤢

Yes and I think most of it is better or at least comparable quality eg veg, meat, fish, than Tesco & Asda. (I don't live near enough either Lidl or Aldi to use them at the moment, well there is a small Lidl but it's very old and dirty with a small range - my experience where I used to live was of a large clean well-stocked bright one.)

In our local Lidl the bakery sits right next to the public toilets. The smell can be bad and with the items not wrapped, it really puts me off.

The bakery was a lot more processed compared to our normal supermarket. I often buy basic ‘mozzarella rolls’ locally, and the Lidl ones have double the ingredients somehow. Much drier.

The peaches I bought last year, came home, washed as usual and into fruit bowl. Next morning they all had a layer of mould on the outside. From the market or other supermarket they would be fine for 4-5 days +