Interesting article about Aldi/Lidl

murphaph

Indeed, speedy checkout staff are part of the corporate culture at both retailers. One used to require staff to memorise all the prices for every product and the other required them to memorise a 3 digit code for every product in store. Scanners are quite new in their german branches as they are actually slower than an operator keying in codes as the operator could look down the belt and have it all keyed in before the customer had even emptied their trolley! A legacy of this system is that staff throughout Europe are still expected to memorise all fruit and veg codes and you will notice how simple the keyboards are at these stores compared to many-just a keypad and card reader basically! Other retailers have monstrous keyboard with all sorts of colours for the different depts. The two german companies rely on the staff to remember and it makes the process much faster.

As an employee of one of the two companies I will say the following; the figures the SBP used may be accurate but BOTH companies are private concerns and as such are not required to disclose their accounts like a PLC. They are both extremely secretive about their figures and it is an advantage to them. Suffice to say, a branch of either company in the RoI is likley to be approximately twice as productive (turnover/man hours used) as in their homeland. The german management should be fairly pleased with its operations here.

Both companies are tough employers and there is always pressure to deliver but competent staff are well paid for their efforts. It's not slave labour by any means. People would be shocked if they knew what a regular store manager earns, albeit for hard work.

If you want to know if the stuff is any good, ask the staff-all staff do their shopping in there, that says more to me about quality than anything else. The rule in my company (and I assume the other) is that if you are in any way unsure about the quality of meat/fruit/veg etc. then you simply take it off sale and bin it. There is no running to a supervisor to ask. The way staff are supposed to decide is simple "would you buy this?" if not, bin it.

I can understand the frustrations at till queues but remember, staff will try to clear them asap and if we had another cashier on, we'd have to increase prices. Nevertheless, I have been stood longer in queues in 'traditional' supermarkets than in either german retailer on more than one occasion. Both companies operate on a minimum staff level princple but both pay higher to cashiers than other retailers so staff know more is expected of them. However, if for example, a staff member calls in sick at short notice, this can affect us more than a store with lots of redundancy but with the consequent higher prices.

Alun

sashasolar wrote:

BTW, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw ORGANIC vegetables in Aldi last Sunday!

They've got them in Lidl now, too. Potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, tomatoes and a few other things. Most from Irish producers plus one or two from the UK and Holland. The tomatoes were actually Italian!

sashasolar

Alun wrote:

They've got them in Lidl now, too. Potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, tomatoes and a few other things. Most from Irish producers plus one or two from the UK and Holland. The tomatoes were actually Italian!

I wander what the traditional supermarkets will do with their crazy prices for organic stuff.
BTW, Aldi's organic range expanding a bit:D

Jambo

My 2pence worth about Lidl and Aldi is like stekelly said - take a look at their package contents / ingredients and see for your self the amounts of additives , salt , sugars and preservatives that are contained within .

I used to shop at both lidl and aldi all the time until I noticed this myself and then I also noticed looking at a lot of there sell by dates compared to similar goods in your local spar / tesco / dunnes , our german friends seem to have products that have shelf lifes way over and above what spar / tesco / dunnes are offering so surely this must say something .

Stekelly wrote:

Look at the pork contents of stuff like irish sausages, then compare it to the german stuff in lidl/aldi. 55% (denny, everyday etc) compared to 90 -odd % is always going to taste different.

And just to say one more thing about the above quote who says what the pork content is ? lips , ears , skin there all part of the pig they all could be pork content . And these trimmings / offcuts have been know to be in many other canned and preserved meals !!

MOH

Jambo wrote:

My 2pence worth about Lidl and Aldi is like stekelly said - take a look at their package contents / ingredients and see for your self the amounts of additives , salt , sugars and preservatives that are contained within .

I used to shop at both lidl and aldi all the time until I noticed this myself and then I also noticed looking at a lot of there sell by dates compared to similar goods in your local spar / tesco / dunnes , our german friends seem to have products that have shelf lifes way over and above what spar / tesco / dunnes are offering so surely this must say something .

Well, it could just be saying that the stuff in Lidl/Aldi is fresher when it goes on the shelf. My local Spar used to be a joke, had to stop going there as stuff was always going off.

Jambo wrote:

And just to say one more thing about the above quote who says what the pork content is ? lips , ears , skin there all part of the pig they all could be pork content . And these trimmings / offcuts have been know to be in many other canned and preserved meals !!

Same comment applies equally to Irish sausages!

Marksie

I do my shopping in lidl all the time. Some of their stuff is very good, some so so. You choose what you want in one shop then get what you want from another. But certainly consumers in the laois branch moaned that you couldnt get everything under one roof and went to rip off tescos. they didnt seem to care about savings..just convenience. But when i asked them if they would walk 200yards and wait for an extra 15minutes and i would give em 25 euro (my average saving) they said yes, but couldnt apply it to doing the same with shopping.

If i had a gripe it would be with the check outs..they are very rarely fullymanned. In the uk, they checkout girls insist on you loading the trolley and leaving the till free for the next ones immediately. Not so in the laois branch, possibly because the locals would get thick with em.
Mind you it is crazy on the "specials" days the is full of guys with wellies and the women are fighting over the cheap bedding.

2funki4wheelz

Have to add my support to Lidl (mostly) and Aldi too.

A Lidl set up in Portarlington on my side of town, a much shorter walk than to Supervalu as I have no car. As mentioned in previous posts I think a % of Irish people are:
- wannabe snobby .People have more money than sense - hence "luxury" ranges like Tesco Finest etc pay more = get more
- stuck in their ways ("but I've always bought my sausages in Superquinn")
- rubbish at getting bargains/accept things the way they are

I know tons of people who wouldn't even try the food from Lidl, automatically assuming it's rubbish because it doesn't say Findus/Superquinn/Denny's or whatever. I don't buy everything there, I understand personal taste (I hate their milk for example) but I save a fortune on cleaning products, which particularly suit me (and many Irish homes) as they all seem to remove limescale, and foods like tuna, cheeses, biscuits, sweets, kitchen roll, veg etc.

(As a thought how many people do you know that suddenly embraced Lidl/Aldi for Halloween for stuff to hand to other people's children????):rolleyes:

I thought it was just where I lived where people were afraid of new stuff, it's amazing how many people (with cars!!) still shop in our local rip-off SuperValu. But I guess it's everywhere. I hope we don't lose our Lidl!

murphaph

Useful recipe website devoted to Lidl ingredients! Bon Apetit!

dancin

Jambo wrote:

And just to say one more thing about the above quote who says what the pork content is ? lips , ears , skin there all part of the pig they all could be pork content . And these trimmings / offcuts have been know to be in many other canned and preserved meals !!

And you think that the Irish factory produced meats are any better?

I worked as a butcher while paying my way through college, and I could tell you a thing or two about the irish food chain...

Where do you think they put the "mechanically reclaimed meat" (stripped from bone with a pressure hose) - that's the stuff that the workers can't get off with a Knife because it's too small to cut away, or in an inaccessible place.

And that makes up only a little over half of the product, the rest is filler, mainly Rusk (like you feed kids without the sugar) and water. You'd be amazed at how much of the sausage or burger you're paying for by weight is just water...

Even the "quality" products that the bigger supermarkets make in store and not much better. Their meat content is mostly Fat. You should hang around in the morning when they're preparing the ingredients (is most shops then do this front of house), look closely at what is going into today's sausages.

Your quality pound of sausages is mostly Fat, Water, Rusk. And maybe 1 to 2 ounces of the 16 in your pound is actually meat...

The Aldi/Lidl stuff may not be any better quality of meat wise, but at least it's mostly the meat you think you're paying for, not water and rusk and other fillers.

Raskolnikov

When Lidl first opened in Ireland a few years back, I used to shop there especially for fruit and vegtables, jams, pizza's, tea, milk, bread, loo roll, cleaning stuff and a couple of other things. However, because fruit and veg were so cheap (relative to competitors), Lidl jacked the price up to the point where they were only marginally cheaper than Tesco. My shopping bill was still cheaper but I wasn't prepared to spend my time queuing in two different shops.

Having said that though, my auld fella loves the place and he hates shopping.

murphaph

Raskolnikov wrote:

Having said that though, my auld fella loves the place and he hates shopping.

A common enough sentiment. The stores aren't so large as to make the task seem daunting! Aisles are typically wider than most supermarkets too and the low height of the F&V and non-food run down the centre of the store gives you 'breathing space'.