German Supermarkets

[DavidGrain]

I think in the early days of my local Aldi they had trolleys only. I have a recollection of the first times I used the store I carried the few items I bought in my hands. I was pleased when they introduced baskets.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think in the early days of my local Aldi they had trolleys only. I have a recollection of the first times I used the store I carried the few items I bought in my hands. I was pleased when they introduced baskets.

Yes, that's correct, they used to be trolley only.

 

[WestCoast]

My local Lidl actually has 6 self checkouts, where you scan and pack like a regular supermarket. It's no different to doing a bit of shopping in the Tesco round the corner, except that the queue is usually longer.

I don't believe Aldi ever does self-checkout, or at least never seen any.

 

[GusB]

I think in the early days of my local Aldi they had trolleys only. I have a recollection of the first times I used the store I carried the few items I bought in my hands. I was pleased when they introduced baskets.

That certainly rings a bell with me regarding my early experiences with Lidl. With the store being literally just across the road from the block of flats where I lived, it more or less served as our local corner shop as far as things like bread and milk were concerned. Taking a trolley meant having a £1 coin to hand, which wasn't always possible.

When we did require a trolley, the staff were good enough to turn a blind eye to us crossing the road and taking it up in the lift. They knew it'd come back.

 

[mmh]

The pack away from the till does not work if, as I usually do in Aldi, you just have a basket not a trolley.

It works perfectly well. You carry the basket with you and put the goods back into it as they're scanned then go to the packing shelf with your basket.

 

[alxndr]

It works perfectly well. You carry the basket with you and put the goods back into it as they're scanned then go to the packing shelf with your basket.

It must depend on the Aldi. Baskets are not allowed past the till where I am.

I vastly prefer Aldi to the traditional supermarkets. It's cheap, it's easier, there's a natural flow to it rather than having people bimble about at random, and they maintain the same two layouts so you can find things. I don't have a problem with the quality of their food, including veg, either.

Not so keen on Lidl, but perhaps that's because I only end up in there once in a blue moon.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It must depend on the Aldi. Baskets are not allowed past the till where I am.

I vastly prefer Aldi to the traditional supermarkets. It's cheap, it's easier, there's a natural flow to it rather than having people bimble about at random, and they maintain the same two layouts so you can find things. I don't have a problem with the quality of their food, including veg, either.

Not so keen on Lidl, but perhaps that's because I only end up in there once in a blue moon.

Same here, no baskets past the till. Which I do find a bit odd as it means processing a basket of goods is slow, comparatively.

What I do find of the smaller nature of Aldi etc is that you can easily shop there with no shopping list - the range is narrow enough that you can genuinely look at every category of goods as you pass and think "do I need that?" - a football pitch sized Tesco is too big for that.

Lidl seems a bit downmarket from Aldi but is essentially the same thing. One thing in favour of Lidl, if you want that, is the greater availability of German goods - Aldi's range has very much been Anglicised these days.

 

[SteveP29]

Though you sometimes got a divider in the packing area instead so one person could pack while another person's purchases were rung up.

I wonder why they disappeared and I can't remember when they did.
My parents used to drag me along on the Saturday morning shop, my Grandmother used to come too, she'd put her stuff at the front of the trolley .
At the checkout, we'd put our stuff through, the barrier would come over and by the time we had just about finished packing, hers was packed too, no hanging round.
She used to them buy us our breakfast in the cafe, this was when a cafe in a supermarket was unheard of (it was Savacentre in The Galleries, Washington btw)

I do remember some Netto stores in the West Midlands during the second half of the 1990s.

The joke used to go what's yellow and full of s**t? A Netto carrier bag.
Obviously this was in the days before I actually had to spend my money on food (and subsequently not appreciating its relevance), rather than pay my parents weekly board and have everything in the cupboards and fridge.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wonder why they disappeared and I can't remember when they did.

You still get them in Switzerland. I suspect it was with the move to larger supermarkets outside of town and thus people doing larger shops rather than just a smaller one for a couple of days on foot, which is how it's still done in Switzerland.

 

[cactustwirly]

Same here, no baskets past the till. Which I do find a bit odd as it means processing a basket of goods is slow, comparatively.

What I do find of the smaller nature of Aldi etc is that you can easily shop there with no shopping list - the range is narrow enough that you can genuinely look at every category of goods as you pass and think "do I need that?" - a football pitch sized Tesco is too big for that.

Lidl seems a bit downmarket from Aldi but is essentially the same thing. One thing in favour of Lidl, if you want that, is the greater availability of German goods - Aldi's range has very much been Anglicised these days.

Really? I'd say Lidl is more upmarket than Aldi tbh, it does have an onsite bakery which Aldi doesn't, and the checkout cashiers seem friendlier and less rushed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Really? I'd say Lidl is more upmarket than Aldi tbh, it does have an onsite bakery which Aldi doesn't, and the checkout cashiers seem friendlier and less rushed.

That may be true, but I find the quality of the own-brand products to be markedly inferior.

 

[cactustwirly]

That may be true, but I find the quality of the own-brand products to be markedly inferior.

It depends on the product, but Lidl's biscuits and coffee (the 'Deluxe' ground coffee is probably the best out of all the supermarkets IMO) are definately better than Aldi, and most items are very similar between the 2 supermarkets tbh!

 

[Mojo]

The queues are longer, but the very fast processing by the cashiers and the way you pack at a shelf away from the till at your leisure[1] mean that they move in my experience far more quickly.

Aldi’s might be like that because they don’t have semi-attended customer activated terminals but Lidl’s most certainly isn’t. For small shops such as bread or milk I will often go to one of the conventional supermarkets, or Iceland’s, even though I’ll pay slightly more for bread, just because of the queues.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Aldi’s might be like that because they don’t have semi-attended customer activated terminals but Lidl’s most certainly isn’t. For small shops such as bread or milk I will often go to one of the conventional supermarkets, or Iceland’s, even though I’ll pay slightly more for bread, just because of the queues.

Another reason for Aldi being better than Lidl, then

I'll go to Aldi by choice. I only go to Lidl if I want German products.

 

[cactustwirly]

Aldi’s might be like that because they don’t have semi-attended customer activated terminals but Lidl’s most certainly isn’t. For small shops such as bread or milk I will often go to one of the conventional supermarkets, or Iceland’s, even though I’ll pay slightly more for bread, just because of the queues.

My local Lidl is good in that it has self checkouts for small shops, and IMO you don't have to queue for that long.
They're also very good, as they'll open another checkout if there's a large queue.

 

[Qwerty133]

Same here, no baskets past the till. Which I do find a bit odd as it means processing a basket of goods is slow, comparatively.

What I do find of the smaller nature of Aldi etc is that you can easily shop there with no shopping list - the range is narrow enough that you can genuinely look at every category of goods as you pass and think "do I need that?" - a football pitch sized Tesco is too big for that.

Lidl seems a bit downmarket from Aldi but is essentially the same thing. One thing in favour of Lidl, if you want that, is the greater availability of German goods - Aldi's range has very much been Anglicised these days.

The Aldi that I shop in most often encourages baskets to be taken beyond the till, to the extent that some of the cashiers will shout at customers not doing so. But then I suppose that most businesses have to operate slightly differently in a student area where most customers are buying relatively few items as they are travelling on foot so can only buy what they can reasonably carry. As one of the few students who had actually shopped in an Aldi before going to university, I find the first few weeks of each academic year rather annoying stuck behind several students who are clearly more used to shopping at Waitrose and therefore significantly slowing down the check out process. Although this particular Aldi also has an annoying habit of keeping the queues 'shorter' by opening more tills than they have staff for and staff rotating around the open tills.

 

[route101]

Noticed there is two types of Adli , the blue one which we dont get in the UK , seemed inferior the normal one.

One thing Aldi lacks is self scans , can be annoying when you have to wait behind trollies when you have only a few things .

 

[Bletchleyite]

Noticed there is two types of Adli , the blue one which we dont get in the UK , seemed inferior the normal one.

There are indeed two Aldis. This came about because the chain was initially founded by two brothers, who later went their separate ways after a disagreement, and in what might be termed a very Germanic manner both carried on with their basically identical supermarkets but dividing up (by areas of Germany, and by country) which would be each of their territories. I believe that, many years on from this, they do agree enough to share some supply chain, though, sort-of in the manner that Waitrose and Booths do at the other end of the market despite not being actually related to one another other than being a similar type of store.

In Germany it's Aldi-Nord and Aldi-Sued - north and south - and there are only a few cities where you get both. In the UK we have Aldi-Sued. The other one (which is more white than blue in terms of the logo, ours is blue) doesn't operate in the UK.

There's a bit more detail on this in the Wiki article - but as I said there is something incredibly Teutonic about the way it happened.

One thing Aldi lacks is self scans , can be annoying when you have to wait behind trollies when you have only a few things .

In most Aldis I've shopped in, the unwritten culture is that if someone has a few items and you have a trolley-load you let them in front. This works very well when people play the game. Indeed, Aldi works very well generally if you play the game - the speed of throughput at the tills requires you to play along by throwing your stuff back into the trolley as quickly as you can rather than faffing with it, and to have your cash or card ready. There's also something quite Teutonic about that - working with the system for the greater good - and when people play along with it it works incredibly well.

 

[Groningen]

In the past the Aldi in the Netherlands had no scanners. The personal had to know the productnumber and had that to enter on the cashregister. Trying to save money! Not anymore now.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In the past the Aldi in the Netherlands had no scanners. The personal had to know the productnumber and had that to enter on the cashregister. Trying to save money! Not anymore now.

This was also true in the UK - and it wasn't the product number originally, it was the price!

 

[Groningen]

Hmm that is a problem when products have the same price. How do you want to know what you have still in your supermarket?

 

[Bald Rick]

Hmm that is a problem when products have the same price. How do you want to know what you have still in your supermarket?

Good old fashioned stock control. Go round and check. It’s what we used to do!

Re the tills, the pricing was fairly straightforward so that the till operators could remember the prices. E.g. all tins of fruit were (say) 29p. When I used to shop in Aldi* (27 years ago) it was quite a sight to see a till operator buzz through a whole trolleyful in about 30 seconds.

* I dont shop in Aldi, or Lidl now. Simply because I don’t know where one is. There’s certainly not any in St Albans or Harpenden!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Hmm that is a problem when products have the same price. How do you want to know what you have still in your supermarket?

You conduct periodic stock checks by walking around and looking what you have. Real-time electronic stock control and automatic re-ordering is a very recent thing.

 

[Bletchleyite]

* I dont shop in Aldi, or Lidl now. Simply because I don’t know where one is. There’s certainly not any in St Albans or Harpenden!

Hemel and Hatfield seem to be your nearest Aldis.

 

[Bald Rick]

Hemel and Hatfield seem to be your nearest Aldis.

No point going all the way over there when there’s a perfectly good Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsbury’s all in walking distance!

 

[GusB]

You conduct periodic stock checks by walking around and looking what you have. Real-time electronic stock control and automatic re-ordering is a very recent thing.

Electronic stock control has been around for a fair bit now - Safeway was using it when I worked there back in 1995, although if I recall correctly, it only updated once a day, so not "real-time" as such. More recently I was with the Co-op, and their system more or less updated instantly. I did an experiment one day by counting the display with all the chocolate bars before the school kids came in at lunchtime, and again afterwards; the amount of thievery was shocking! An element of manual checking is still required because you can't rely 100% on cashiers scanning properly (eg someone buys bags of different flavoured crisps, but they scan the same one multiple times...grumble grumble), and occasionally the depot will send a cross-pick (wrong item sent in place of what was ordered).

 

[DavidGrain]

Remember Kwiksave? That store did not stick price labels on its products. Shelves were filled at night by forklift trucks. Checkout operators had to know the price of every item. But there where only six prices which covered every item in the store.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I remember when Asda didnt have barcode scanners. When barcode tills did get installed it was slower than the old manual system.

As for the difference between Aldi and Lidl, I think it really does vary by product. I've grown used to Aldi, having routinely shopped there for nigh on 15 years, so tend to go there through habit. But some stuff at Lidl is definitely better than Aldi.

I find Aldi fruit and veg goes off quickly but the meat is very high quality.

I also really like the Aldi own-brand real ales. There are some really nice beers brewed by some really good brewers. Favourite at the moment is Medusa which, the internet tells me, is Wychwood.

 

[Groningen]

Every supermarket has a basket in the Netherlands. But one of the Aldi must be the largest with 50 cm high, 30 wide and 25 deep. I made s picture of it in the local Aldi. The size is 787 Kb.

 

[najaB]

But one of the Aldi must be the largest with 50 cm high, 30 wide and 25 deep. I made s picture of it in the local Aldi.

I'll need to check, but I'm fairly certain that the Lidl trolley-basket (it's a basket with wheels) is a big bigger.

Edit: Just noticed, that also has wheels.