Switching to Aldi from Tesco - UPDATE!

[Throwawayaccount1]

Thank you to everyone who let me know their Aldi experiences about a month ago - I appreciate every over of you!

Here's the update!
We love it!

First off - it's averaging at ~£35 cheaper a shop - which is pretty huge! (For reference we are 2 adults, 2 secondary school kids. Were paying around £180 a week on Tesco).

We were prepared for a quality drop as we were paying less. We absolutely did not get a quality drop. More often the quality and taste was better. The meat eaters have reported back that the meat is WAY better. The vegetarian items from the freezer section are also some of the best I've had. The yogurts and ice cream were way better (I was concerned about these). So far toiletry wise we've tried the shower gel and 'fake' sure deodorant - both great.

We love how many of the items are British.

We seem to have lucked out with one where the fruit and veg lasts - phew!

There's literally a few items which we wouldn't get again, none of which are a big deal. So great news!

Absolutely loving spotting the dupes, my oldest comes with me and he finds them hilarious.

The checkout is becoming less stressful - haha!

I would fully recommend to anyone to make the swap.

(Oh yeah, and you get to treat yourself to the bakery as a reward, hello pistachio croissant!)

Thanks everyone!!!!

Tesco do Aldi price match too and also their own club card reductions. We used to use Aldi and I really don't find Tesco any dearer when you take the price match and club card prices into account. And there is more choice and more availability in Tesco. I get my meat mainly from an online butcher for more choice of cuts of meat, chicken and mince from Tesco. And use click and collect so don't have to actually go round the store and queue up, our slot is free.

If they delivered I'd shop there much more.
I don't like shopping in person any more. I have had home deliveries since about 2003 ish.

It baffles me that the UK seems hellbent in not updating the way bakery sections work here. My local Lidl always has people touching all the bread and pastries with their bare hands.

It’s the same in the M&S bakery , I wouldn’t buy anything that isn’t pre packaged . I used to be very anti Aldi after a poor experience and I mainly shop in M&S and Tesco but I’ve found a nice quiet Aldi with self checkouts and can highly recommend their gf chicken tempura bites but annoyingly they’ve stopped doing the salmon encroute

I sometimes shop at Aldi but overall I prefer Tesco and don't find Aldi much cheaper now.

Just out of interest, you switched to lower priced alternatives to things like sure deodorant. Did you do that at Tesco first?

I just wondered because of the £35 you save a week, how much of it was because you have off brand now vs the brands you would have chosen at Tesco, and whether that could have been saved there too.

Doesn’t really matter either way, I’m interested is all. Glad you’re enjoying Aldi, I really need to try it but I just shop in Tesco on autopilot so always wonder if it is worth having to remember what I need and where it is etc

That’s what I meant, the UK just doesn’t seem to want to update their supermarket bakery systems.

In my country they’re screen protected and then you just slide what you want through a gap in the middle. No one ever touches it but you.

And then you can get it sliced but I think there’s some places here now that you can do it too, to be fair.

Our local Lidl bakery has the items behind clear plastic doors. With attached tongs.

Im an aldi/lidl convert. They're interchangeable I think, although my aldi has had lots out of stock the last few weeks and lidl has been better.
I love the plasterers bucket idea. I usually strategically pop a couple of bakery items along the belt. They have to identify them, find the code and enter it on the till, slows them right down 😁

@malefields you used to be able to get bread sliced at our local Tesco but it went with the Covid lockdown and never returned .

Do we really call places with ovens reheating mass produced frozen crap bakeries these days?

I tried Aldi last week to see if I could bring my grocery bill down. I’d say the savings were less than I’d hoped. For me, the savings were not enough to compensate for not being able to scan and go. In sainsburys I love that I scan and pack as I go along. The trauma of the checkout experience in Aldi is just not worth the small
saving. 😂

How funny, I went into an Aldi earlier to get a loaf of bread as I was walking past and I caught myself thinking “do people really manage to do a full weeks shop in here ?” I really don’t like Aldi

Same. So much heavily processed food stuff. It’s just not great quality.

We don't have Aldi locally, but I have long been saying Lidl own is much better than other supermarket own brands, and quite often better than the branded items too, as well as being significantly cheaper. E.g. their ice cream cones make Cornetto taste of nothing, their Stawberry Crunch cereal has much more strawberry than Jordans.

If you're comparing it to the "bakery" in any other supermarket, it is great quality. Maybe not compared to your artisan place where a croissant costs £4.50.

Do other supermarkets not also have heavily processed food stuff then? What a weird comment!

op I tried their tiles crisps (squares) this week and think they're actually better than squares.

My neighbours love Aldi. I actually find Tesco cheaper most of the time - if I use the ranges they match against Aldi and use my clubcard.

I tend to just buy ingredients to cook from scratch though, and not really anything prepared. Some of the more processed stuff may well be cheaper.

I do find their dishwasher pods cheaper and better though, so pop in to buy them - then end up spending more in the middle aisle!

Even though we've got one of the new bigger stores, there's a fraction of the range of Tesco. Lots of the stuff on my shopping list I just can't get there.

I use the Aldi self-checkouts (that annoying need a storeworker to handle the reduced stuff), because I don't like my shopping getting thrown through the till at me.

There's a bread slicing machine in my local big Tesco, so maybe they are bringing them back.

Ooh, they sometimes do a LOVELY mushroom tart (if you like that sort of thing*!). I buy them fresh then freeze them…

Sadly, our Aldi doesn’t have a section for fresh bakery products — we have to go to Lidl for those…

*I realise that may not appeal to the meat-eaters…

Well it depends what you're buying. They have staples like pasta, eggs, bags od oats, bagas of nuts and seeds, rice, cheese, butter, cans of kidney beans, herbs, yoghurt, chicken. None of that is "heavily processed".

Yes there is heavily processed food just as there is in every supermarket.

Same! I once watched a guide dog lick every item along the bottom row, obviously the owner could not see what his dog was up to, but I put me right off.

I used to live near an Aldi

I hate supermarket shopping but I do miss the Aldi stuff. They have some really good stuff. And like you say, OP so much British stuff.

Yeah, I'm a terrible snob about quality of food and don't eat processed food when I can avoid it, always do Aldi which surprises everyone who knows me

My teens seem to live on crisps and cereal, neither of which seem to be up to much in Aldi/Lidl.