Good and Bad Buys at Lidl and Aldi stores (***Please don't expire***)

Katiehound

harz99 said:

My Aldi shop this morning, and i was shocked to see all the carrots on sale were the Nairobi variety , but imported from Israel! Instead of being a bit wet, the bags ( and carrots) were dry looking. For heavens sake, we grow an abundance of carrots in the UK without the need for all the food miles importing stuff from the likes of India/Israel/Chile!

The only problem is that until you saw those carrots today, the ones sold in Aldi have been almost rotting in the bag because they are last year's  and haven't stored  (or been stored ) well . (As well as being washed & stored in plastic) I assume it is a tad too early for main crop home grown ones.  Saving food miles is all very well, but not if the produce is already fermenting!

I won't need to buy any carrots for a couple of weeks as I have discovered some chopped & frozen ones in the freezer- some certainly cooked quick before they went bad. Today's big thrill: defrosting the freezer.......

Nelliegrace

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

dealyboy

Nelliegrace said:

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

Now your testing me. I don't think I remember them at 1d, maybe 3d. Was there a deluxe one at 6d? maybe I'm thinking of Galaxy.

Either better memory than me or closer to 100.

Rosa_Damascena

Nelliegrace said:

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

I was born a couple of years post-decimalisation and the Cadburys I remember from my childhood was something else. What put me off it once and for all is visiting a Cadburys factory in Australia - their so-called chocolate is an abomination.

Good things about Aldi: pineapple are on a good offer as part of the current Super 6 (69p), their tonic water and also the Fabulosa spray which was a middle aisle special (although the brand is not restricted to sale in Aldi) - I bought the raspberry and black pepper which smells nicer than all my Method sprays (eight part-used at the last count).. 

Doc_N

Nelliegrace said:

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

Two people here remembering those. Thin, quite small, I’d guess around 10g. 1950s. Didn’t they also do larger 2d ones?

Longwalker

A._Badger said:

I agree about Aldi and Lidl having lost their edge but I suspect the reason is because the margins they were making were so much smaller than those of the mainstream supermarkets that when they were hit by cost price inflation they had less room to manoeuvre. They are still cheaper for a lot of products but not by as much as they once were.

Where Aldi has also lost its charm for me (I can't speak for Lidl as I don't shop there) is in its Satan's jumble sale middle aisle. I used to find all sorts of useful things there to tempt me (particularly gardening supplies) but I now find it filled with trashy, nasty ornaments and far too many poor quality children's items. It's one less reason to me shop there.



  

The price increases have been very noticeable but its true that the discounters had very little wriggle room, they had to pass the increases on where as the big 4 could absorb some 

I was reaching up for some cheese last week and a fella stood beside me said that I could buy cheese cheaper in Tesco. He was right, I could, but that would have been what I call plastic cheese - rubbery, no texture, no flavour. My Lidl Extra Mature is worth every penny , proper cheese which crumbles when you cut it, has salt deposits, has a slight crunch to it. Id be paying much more for the same quality in Tesco

Thats why I still shop in Lidl, because of the quality for price and my shopping basket is still cheaper there then Tesco even with some really noticeable price hikes  

fatbelly

Nelliegrace said:

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

Pretty sure they did 1/2 d bars too

robrymond

Cathedral city when on offer in Sainsbury's is not far off the price of cheese in Aldi.

Cadburys for the most part is sugary rubbish, but the smaller standard dairy milk bars are still quite nice. 

Another thing that Aldi just doesn't get right anymore is checkout speed and queues. The automated till announcer is annoying and it's constantly going off. I know this is store specific but the Nantwich store checkout staff are far slower than those I experienced in Stoke. Middle aisle is full of the same junk now and largely food related or crates of beer again at prices over the other supermarkets.

Rosa_Damascena

robrymond said:

Cathedral city when on offer in Sainsbury's is not far off the price of cheese in Aldi.

Cadburys for the most part is sugary rubbish, but the smaller standard dairy milk bars are still quite nice. 

Another thing that Aldi just doesn't get right anymore is checkout speed and queues. The automated till announcer is annoying and it's constantly going off. I know this is store specific but the Nantwich store checkout staff are far slower than those I experienced in Stoke. Middle aisle is full of the same junk now and largely food related or crates of beer again at prices over the other supermarkets.

I think it depends in the store and the time of day. My local Aldi is quick and painless thanks to self-service stations, the staff at the checkouts also whizz things through like grease lightning. Lidl in contrast is painfully slow because there are always so few people on the shop floor. I heard they were cutting back on staffing hours which might explain the state of some of our local stores.

p00hsticks

Rosa_Damascena said:

Nelliegrace said:

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate was once delicious, real chocolate with full fat milk. Who remembers the penny (1d) bars wrapped in foil?

Good things about Aldi: pineapple are on a good offer as part of the current Super 6 (69p)

That is a good price, but I have to confess that pineapple is the one fruit that I now prefer to buy tinned than fresh,  as whenever I've bought fresh in the past I've always been disappointed.