They could do a lidl bit better...in fact they could do a lot better!!! (Lidl)

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Lidl
Date:	13/01/09 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some good and unusual products. Great Stollen and Panettone

Disadvantages: Stressful, bad layout, poor fresh produce. NOT AS CHEAP AS IT MAKES OUT!!

****** My trip to Lidl ******

My girlfriend and I started our Christmas shopping very early so we could spread the cost over a few months to help make it a bit easier, what with the current financial environment. Anyway, one of the things we started getting early was non perishable foods, you know the kind of things. Jars of pickles and spreads, tins of biscuits,boxes of chocolates etc.

Along with these, we wanted a nice stollen (a traditional German cake) and a big Panettone (a traditional Italian Christmas cake). For several years my mother has been buying these each year in Lidls in my local town, and has always found them to be very nice and very reasonably priced. My girlfriend and I, who are usually Morrisons shoppers, decided to do our shopping in Lidl one weekend so we could pick up the Stollen and Panettone along with our normal shopping.

Now, I should explain, our weekly shopping is done on a fairly strict budget, and seeing as I get free lunches at work and my girlfriend doesn't eat a great deal, we don't need to buy much. Normally it's just vegetables, maybe some meat, bread, milk and squash, all simple things really, and we stick to own brands because they are considerably cheaper and we find that the quality of the Morrisons brand products are very good indeed.

Anyway, we went on our way to Lidl, only my second time ever in a Lidl, and the first at this particular store. My first impression as we drove into the car park and I saw the trolleys out the front of the store was that it was just like any other supermarket, though a little smaller.

Once out of the car, we went to the trolleys and I realised that they were actually quite a lot smaller than those at other supermarkets, sort of somewhere between the full size trolley and the half depth ones you get. Anyway, it was enough to hold quite a lot though I'm not sure it would hold anywhere near enough if you, like my parents when I was younger, did a monthly food shop. As mentioned, we don't tend to buy a great deal each week so these quite cute little trolleys would be fine for us.

As we entered the store, it immediately became apparent that it was a little different to other supermarkets, rather more scruffy in it's displays and layout, I would describe it as mildy shambolic. some of the shelves looked more like a jumble sale than a shop shelf, with items rather higgledy piggledy, almost resembling one of those rummage bins of discounted goods you find in some shops. Also, there didn't seem like there had been much thought given to the layout and the positioning of items but I guess if you were to shop there regularly you would soon get used to it.

Our first stop as ever was the fresh produce. Now, we are used to shopping in a store which has a great range of good quality fresh fruit and vegetables, with plenty of choice and lots of each so you can pick out the best. This was not quite the same in the Lidl, they had a more limited range of vegetables etc and to be honest, some of the items really didn't look that great, certainly not up to the standard of the vegetables in Morrisons. None the less, we got the bits we wanted, just some tomatoes, cucumber and some courgettes and other bits.

As we progressed round the store picking up equivilent products to those that we would normally buy, we often found we had to retrace our steps due to the strange layout as previously mentioned, but on the whole we managed to find everything we wanted, although the choice was much more limited. Whereas Morrisons might have 2 or 3 different versions of an own brand product and 3 or 4 branded versions, the Lidl only had maybe 2 or three choices, normally a well known brand and two total unknowns. It didn't really present a problem as we are not precious about what makes we buy, though we did discover when we got home that we had ended up with a jar of Mayonnaise which was truely vile!

When we got to the checkout, I was amazed to see that unlike other supermarkets where there is a long conveyor belt to unpack your trolley onto and a large area at the end of the checkout for you to pack your bags on, these checkouts were tiny, with barely any room to unpack your trolley, and no where for you to pack your shopping away. Even with our small shop, it was rather manic as the checkout boy (not the most mentally gifted of people...) had no regard for the speed with which you were packing, nor that you had run out of space and bags, and just continued to scan items with the total dettachment from his surroundings that a zombie might have.

Luckily we had our own reuseable shopping bags (oh yes, we will single handedly save the planet with our tough shopping bags...) and are very well practiced at packing shopping bags, so we managed fine but I can imagine that if you had done a large shop, it would be very stressful trying to get everything packed away well in the face of a relentless stream of scanned items coming at you at a very unhelpfully fast pace.

Anyway, we survived the experience, got our normal weekly shopping and picked up the stollen and panettone we wanted, along with a few other rather interesting items which we had spotted on the shelves and were intrigued about.


******* My Thoughts on my trip to Lidl *******

1) The layout of the store can be frustrating at times because there seems to be no real logic behind it, for example, just inside the door was all the squash concentrates, however, the fizzy drinks were all the way at the back of the store on the opposite side, literally as far away from the squash as it was possible to be. I'm sure you'd get used to it but for our one off shopping it was annoying constantly having to retrace your steps and search all over the place for oddly located items.

2) The fresh produce is not very good. The actual range and choice of fresh fruit and vegetables was really quite limited with only the basics being available. If you only shopped in Lidl you would be missing out on a huge variety of lovely fresh foods which are readily available in other supermarkets. Also, the items that we got did not last very long, the cucumber for example lasted only about a week before it was really squishy and inedible. Morrions produce last considerably longer than this which asks questions about how fresh the items in Lidl really are.

3) The shopping experience is not that great, and when it comes to the checkout, it is a total nightmare. This is not the type of place that I personally would want to shop on a regular basis as it was too cramped, too messy and rather stressful really.

4) Some unusual and nice foods. Being a German supermarket chain. they do stock some items which you don't find in other stores, and some of them are rather good. As well as the Stollen and Panettone which we knew to be delicious and really reasonably priced, we also picked up some other items, mainly snack type things, which looked intriguing and were cheap. We had some nice biscuits and crisps which were yummy and cheap.

5) Despite the huge advertising campaign of late with the slogan "Spend a little, Live a lot" we noticed that the pricing is something you really need to watch out for. Some items were cheap, but others were either around the same as Morrisons or actually more expensive. Each week my girlfriend and I keep a record of what we've purchased and how much it cost so we were easily able to compare prices as we went. Although it is advertised as being a good value supermarket, it is just the same as the others really in that you have to have your wits about you if you are to get the most for your money. Something which would be lost on a lot of people who would shop in there in the belief that they were saving money when in fact they would be paying the same elsewhere but with much greater choice!



****** Conclusion ******

Although my experience of Lidl is extremely limited, I think I picked up enough on my trip to be able to come to my own conclusion about the place.

It is marketed as being a cheap supermarket but in reality it is just the same as everywhere else in that you need to keep an eye on the prices of the items you are buying if you want to get the most for your money. I'm sure there are people shopping in Lidl who don't realise this and just shop there in the belief that they must be saving money. Bundled on top of the fact that it is not really a very pleasant shopping experience, what with bad layout and horrific checkouts, I really can't see myself shopping there more than once a year when we go to get our Stollen and Panettone, both of which are a total bargain compared to other supermarkets, and both of which are really good quality and delicious.

(Lidls gets two stars purely on the basis of it's good unusual foreign foods)

Summary: Fine for a once a year trip, nothing more!!!