A 'lidl' about Lidl (Lidl)

Member Name: GentleGenius

Product:	Lidl
Date:	23/10/09 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good greengrocery, some items very cheap

Disadvantages: Some items very poor quality, no baskets, trolleys too large, produce arranged illogically

NB: I have just noticed that the main title for this review is about Lidl Mini Jaffa Cakes. I intend my review to just be about Lidl as a shop overall, and thought that's how it would appear - as there are a couple of other reviews which are just about Lidl. I don't know how my review has thus come under this specific heading.

Until a couple of years ago, I didn't even know Lidl existed. This was partly due to living pretty much inside my head most of the time, and even when I did spot my closest Lidl branch whilst a bus I was on one day passed by the shop, I for some peculiar reason got the impression that it was a used car sales showroom. I think it was my sister who suggested I pay Lidl a visit, her explaining to me that in fact it wasn't a car showroom - but a shop which sold cut price foodstuffs. My passion for all things edible together with my increasingly diminishing bank balance urged me into hopping on a bus to see what this magical Lidl place was all about.

At the time, and I have since cured myself of this particular piece of snobbery, I had a deep prejudice against any kind of food store where you had to put a £1 coin in a slot to release a trolley. For some reason, this requirement spelled to me a shop which sold poor quality goods, and I think that came from once having visited an Aldi store many years ago, and concluding that quality-wise, it was quite likely the worst shopping experience I've ever had.

On walking towards the doors of my local Lidl and discovering that not only was the £1 in the slot for a trolley a definite requirement, the shop didn't provide baskets. I gritted my teeth though and tried to remember that I'm an Essex Girl from very lower working-class roots, told myself not to be such a snotty cow, and grabbed a trolley after fishing for the required £1 coin and inserting it in the slot.

Since that day, though I haven't shopped on a regular basis at Lidl, I do visit occasionally, especially when Xmas is creeping close.

My nearest Lidl store is a short bus-ride away, and is situated in Hadleigh, Essex, along the London Road, probably a little under a quarter of a mile from the 'Welcome To Southend-on-Sea' sign if you travel in an easterly direction.

There is a reasonably sized car park outside the store, and whenever I've been there it has always been virtually empty. The trolleys are stored up against the shop wall inside metal barriers, but there is no notice or sign to tell people (like me) who can be ignorant about these things, how to actually release a trolley. I did manage to work it out though on my first visit.

The first thing you see on walking into my local Lidl is a very burly, tall man dressed in security guard's uniform - he looks rather fierce, and I feel this might put some shoppers off, because he casts angry glares at each customer as they make their way into the store. I personally felt quite intimidated by this man's gaze!

Once inside the shop, it is rather messy, but this is to be expected of a cut price store. The aisles are clear, but (at least in my nearest branch) there seems to be no logical order to the food layout. For instance, tinned vegetables are next to fizzy drinks, yet tinned fruit is in the middle of the tea and coffee section. Boxes of breakfast cereal are next to the pre-packed fresh meats counter, and pet supplies are wedged in between two shelves of chocolate products and biscuits.

Most of the brands appear to be German or Dutch, and overall there is quite a comprehensive selection of tinned produce that can't be found in other supermarkets; one example is a German brand of tinned baked beans and bacon rolls which have been wrapped around chunks of würst sausage.

Across the back of the shop is a very well laid-out and arranged chilled foods section, with lots of different cold cooked meats, a plethora of different types of pre-packed cheese, fresh salad bags, pies, pasties, quiches, cream, milk and all sorts of other tempting-looking items.

On my visit the day before yesterday, I was very pleased to pick up what to me was a super bargain - six packs of extremely lean, very high quality minced beef for just £4.99 (that amount of mince will last me about 24 meals, as each pack easily divided into 4 generous single portions) and a bag containing 6 very lean, substantial pork fillets - they were £1.89 per bag of 6 and the one I bought will comfortably provide me with 6 meals.

The fresh fruit and vegetables are, I feel, Lidl's crowning glory. In my local Lidl, there is a huge section in the middle of the shop which is completely devoted to greengrocery. Apart from some pre-packed tomatoes and boxed strawberries, everything is on a serve-yourself basis and the bags provided are all paper, which I really like....I hate plastic bags. I was overjoyed to buy a huge biodegradable string bag of extremely high quality tomatoes for 45p - altogether there were 18 tomatoes inside the string bag, and I prefer them to be packed that way rather than in plastic cases or other types of environmentally unfriendly contraptions. I ate one of these tomatoes on the bus journey home, and it was beautiful - firm, sweet and very natural-tasting.

There is a substantial frozen food area within the shop, but on this occasion I didn't buy anything from it. In the fairly recent past, I have bought a few items from there, but have been so disgusted with the overall quality (except for a bag of frozen cauliflower I once bought that was first-class quality, as good as fresh!) that after a particularly foul experience with a pack of revolting frozen chicken kiev, I decided to stick to the main supermarkets for stocking up my freezer.

Towards the end of the shop just by the checkouts, there is a huge wine and spirits section, which I can't comment on as I'm not particularly interested in alcohol these days.

The remainder of the shop is largely made up of haphazardly arranged aisles and shelves selling biscuits, chocolate produce, toiletries, gardening items, laundry and household cleaning products and sundry items such as blank CDs, a few children's toys, a small selection of electrical goods, hiking boots, thermal gloves and bathroom fixtures & fittings.

Each time I have been in my local branch of Lidl's, even though it hasn't been very busy, all ten checkouts have been fully operational and open. I have largely found the checkout staff to be fast and efficient, and they always provide plenty of plastic carrier bags without you having to ask first I've not yet come across an item within the shop that hasn't been clearly priced, and it's an easy shop to get out of - some of the major supermarkets have very long, slow-moving checkout queues and by the time I get to that stage, all I want to do is get out of the shop as fast as I can. At Lidl's, I've always been able to do that due to the efficiency of the checkout staff.

My local Lidl is conveniently positioned for people who don't have their own transport. There are two bus stops within a very short walking distance (one serves buses travelling towards Southend and the other serves buses travelling away from Southend), but unlike a lot of the major supermarkets, there is no taxi rank or means within or outside the store to order a cab. That's not convenient for people like me who don't drive and don't use mobile phones.

Of course the store has a no-smoking policy, but there don't appear to be any no-smoking signs outside, and there is a small sheltered area where anybody could stand and puff away if they wanted to, well away from other shoppers who might find smoking offensive.

The inside of the shop overall is quite light and bright, and there is a good selection of music constantly playing - some oldies and some newer stuff - but despite the brightness and the music, the atmosphere within I personally find a little depressing. There seems to be a general air of tackiness about the place that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable for some reason, and I don't like being glared at by the security guard at the door. I must say though (and this is a huge plus for me), each time I've visited my branch of Lidl's. I have yet to encounter that particularly odious hazard of shopping - screeching, rampaging, out of control children! The absence of those little darlings makes the shopping experience 100s of times more comfortable and pleasurable.

I don't like it that there are no baskets provided. The trolleys are very big and deep, being rather difficult to steer efficiently. If you (as I often do) only want a few items, it seems like an unnecessary hassle to shove one of these huge trolleys around the shop, and it makes it very awkward to have to keep bending down to put items inside, then more bending down to remove them at the checkout. The size of the trolleys also (and no doubt this is a sales ploy) removes some self-control as regards the amount that I buy. Once when I visited the store, I ended up buying quite a lot - a fair bit more than I intended - and after I'd passed through the checkout and packed the shopping, it went into 8 bags! That wasn't at all convenient for me to carry home. I can't walk very long distances in one go due to arthritis (the nearest cab pickup point is about 10mins walk away from Lidl's), and though it was mostly my own responsibility to keep a careful eye on what I was buying, I found the huge size of the trolley gave a deceiving impression of what I would later have to carry in bags.

For me, Lidl isn't a shop that I do or would like to use on a regular basis. I find a lot of the tinned, frozen and packaged food to be of sub-standard quality, though as said, their fresh greengrocery products are of the highest order and incredibly cheap. I personally don't find the other produce to be all that much cheaper than anywhere else (apart from the mince and pork fillet I bought which I described above), and I'd rather pay one or two pence more to buy something from one of the major supermarkets, which I know in advance that I'll like. The dairy/delicatessen produce looks reasonable and is very cheap, but I don't personally find it to be anything all that special - not that it claims to be, but I do like a touch of magic to the food I eat.

It is possible to pick some Xmas stocking filler bargains from Lidl's myriad and rather disorganized 'miscellaneous' section, and it is mostly for that reason I visit the shop. Earlier this year, my sister reached her 70th birthday and I had the idea of buying her 70 little presents, one for each year of her life. I was easily able to buy these 70 presents from Lidl, choosing from their toiletries/cosmetics and miscellaneous sections. Most of what I bought was of reasonable quality, and I spent less than £100. I'm sure if I'd have bought the same kind of items at High Street standard shops, I'd have ended up spending at least double that amount.

At the end of the day, I'm not kicking my heels and somersaulting with ecstasy over Lidl's per se, but it is OK for some (mostly non-food) items and for emergencies - the thing which overall makes it a worthwhile place to occasionally shop, is the superb and very cheaply priced grocery department.

Thanks for reading!

Summary: OK for some things, pretty awful for other things