An attempt at shopping at Lidl, UK

Let me start by introducing Lidl and Aldi to those who might not know it. I know we don't have them in SA.

They are grocery stores which are supposedly cheaper than the other grocery stores like Tesco, Saisnbury's, etc that we have here in the UK.

They both have yellow-blue-red/orange logos and I have always wondered if they are actually owned by the same company. Well, if you were wondering the same thing, they're not. I just went and read a bit about Aldi and Lidl on wikipedia and they are actually each others biggest competition, owned by different people.

In Switzerland we had an Aldi in Dietikon where we lived and there I did find buying some groceries from them made quite a difference on what we spent on groceries by the end of the month. I bought tinned food, some meat, pizza dough, we liked their yoghurt, and some other things there. Then I would drive to the Coop afterwards to get the rest of the groceries, especially fruit and veg.

So yesterday I decided since I now have a car I should go try out either Lidl or Aldi here in the next town. They were right opposite each other. I mean right right opposite the road from each other. I chose to go to Lidl since I know Aldi from Switzerland. (We had Lidl in CH too, but not in our town.)

Well first of all as I was used to doing in Switzerland, you have to insert a coin in order to get a trolley. (See the picture above.) If you do not have the correct coin to release a trolley you will be carrying your groceries in your arms since they don't have baskets. Their thing is that when you get to check out you will put your groceries directly into your trolley and then after paying you can go pack your things in bags out of the way of the other customers. I found this out after trying to pack my groceries into my bags as it was being scanned and was told in German to just put it in the trolley as I'm too slow at packing bags.

Now I got this plastic token from my mom which you can insert into the trolley instead of a coin. Do you know how many times in CH I did not have the correct coin because I just tried to use up all my change? So the plastic token works great. You cannot use it to pay for something else so it always stays in your wallet!

So I insert my token, get a trolley and off I go. I am only a few feet down the first aisle when I start thinking, "Where's my laptop, I want to do this online!"

There were people behind me trying to get past and I need to take my time to choose and compare you know.

I had brought with a previous online grocery shop receipt to compare prices. I was surprised to notice that many products were actually a little more expensive or priced the same.

So I started unloading my trolley, but then noticed there's no getting out of this store without going past the till. And I don't want to abandon my trolley. I want to get my token back. So I decide to just buy what's already in my trolley and go finish the rest of the month's shopping at home on my laptop.

Outside I push my trolley back into the queue of trolleys to get my token out. But it's stuck. There is already a lady struggling to get her coin out too, which she manages to do eventually and then try to help me. Another guy comes along and has the same trouble. His wife eventually tells him to just leave the trolley there with their token in it. I didn't want to give up. My mom gave me this token. And even though I don't need to use it much here in the UK, once in a while we come across this kind of system and then I'm always happy to be able to take out my token.

Wel, sadly in the end I also had to just let go of my token. I drove home with my one bag of groceries. Cereal and a chocolate as this is what was in the first aisle at Lidl. And ordered the rest online.

It will be delivered within the next hour. A friendly man will ring my doorbell and carry all my groceries for the month into my kitchen. I will sign for it and unpack and not waste any plastic carrier bags. Then I will go back to the couch to finish watching some recordings on tv while eating my jelly beans that are on their way here now.

The jelly beans!

Want to have a look inside my shopping trolley? No token required for this one!

Mrs Balls Chutney! I bought three bottles just in case it's sold out next time!

Update: Here is a picture of what online grocery shopping looks like when it arrives in your kitchen. No trolleys, no heavy bags, no kids crying for candy.