Our Germanic friends have invaded these shores with various no-frills, budget-tastic supermarkets. One of these, Lidl, sprouted a brand new branch near me so I decided to investigate it after getting fatigued with the usual fare from Tesco. This was a good move as after visiting Lidl a few times I really enjoyed it as an alternative to the mainstream run of supermarkets. In my opinion Lidl has seemed to have achieved its low cost status by cutting costs to the core as I witnessed :

Low staffing levels – they always seem to be busy in a number of roles going from stacking shelves one minute to serving on a checkout the next.

Products are simply stacked on minimal or no shelfing. This gives Lidl a ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ feel. I guess their plan is to sell a high volume of products on wafer thin profit margins.

A more limited range of products than the major supermarkets with less choice within a certain product group e.g. I saw only one type of sparkling water or tins of sweetcorn in only one size.

Limited range of branded products e.g. Nestle, Kelloggs. They mostly have Lidl labelled brands available of which I’ve never heard of before !

No separately staffed counters e.g. customer service, meat, delicatessen.

No customer toilets.

POSITIVE FEATURES

I was pleased to find quite a few of these and they include the following :

Adequate parking.

Polite staff (when you can get hold of them !).

Very good value for a wide range of food and non-food products. If you can get past the odd brand names then I’d recommend the chocolate, biscuits, cereals, muesli, crisps, cheeses, nuts, beer, toiletries, pitta bread, ciabatta bread, tinned vegetables and pasta/curry sauces.

Reasonable range of fresh fruit and vegetables (but don’t expect anything too exotic).

Good range cold meats and sausages.

Wide range of good household consumables e.g. bleach, cleaning products, lightbulbs.

My flatmate recommends the toiletries e.g. facial cleanser.

Nearly always well stocked.

Never seems to be a crowded and manic place to shop.

Nice, wide, spacious aisles and checkouts.

Usually very clean.

Easier and less stressful choosing items while shopping as Lidl’s range of products isn’t so immense as other supermarkets.

Some organic products (eggs, onion, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes) and fair-trade products (chocolate, orange juice etc.) are sold. The range might be limited but this is a good effort considering Lidl’s limited range and no-frills status.

Themed bargain non-food items that come and go e.g. they’ll have a garden products theme, a whole load of gardening items will appear for a while, sell out and never be seen again. I guess they buy a lot of one-off job-lots of items at knock down prices.

The speed of the staff at the checkout ! I complemented the person serving on their speed and he replied that he had to scan one item per second (or else ?!). Additionally if a queue builds up at a checkout they’re quite good at getting another open pretty soon.

Four kinds of shopping trolley available – small, large, ones equipped with a baby seat and ones for wheelchairs.

I must emphasise that some of these features may be usual to the Bristol branch that I visit and may not apply to all Lidl branches e.g. ease of parking, wide aisles and lack of crowds ! So now onto the detractors…

NEGATIVE FEATURES

Like with most things in life there is a balancing side to the positive. These included :

Decreased range of products when compared to the major supermarkets. However they do sell some branded products at reasonable prices e.g. Hula Hoops etc.

No hand baskets ! Do they’d think we’d run off with them ? I guess this is another cost cutting feature and it probably encourages you to buy more when you end up grabbing a much larger trolley instead.

Credit cards are not accepted (ah ha ! another cost cutting feature).

As said before a lot of their non-food specials e.g. car/garden equipment comes and goes and is not consistently available.

The opening hours. My local shop closes at 8 pm. Nice if it was open until 9-10 pm for the sake of convenience.

On a few items Tesco et al can almost be as cheap if not as cheap.

The odd duff product. This is probably inevitable wherever you go. I had the bad luck of consuming one of their vegetarian tortilla wraps from the frozen section. Slimy, gunky and oozing foul processed cheese…mega yuck !

Low staffing levels. It can be sometimes difficult to get hold of someone quickly.

Branch network not as widespread as the major supermarkets.

You need a pound coin handy as a deposit on your shopping trolley. Pain in the bum if you don’t as you have to hang around waiting for a kind soul to turn up with a pound coin to exchange for some change.

CONCLUSION

So in conclusion I would say you get a less stressful, very functional and cheap shopping experience at Lidl. This helps keep the weekly food bills down and prevents Tesco from completely overrunning us all. Oddly I cannot really comment on the wine apart from finding their 2005 red Bordeaux very mediocre, thin bodied and acidic (no surprise at £2.75 a bottle and destined for the cooking pot). However once my parents did manage to pick up a 2004 Margaux claret for £9.99 which was selling at Oddbins for £15.99 so do keep your eyes peeled for the odd fine wine bargain here.

Hope you enjoyed this review and happy shopping !

Zallin