Aldi bargains

[valmarg]

What is the Food chain...
Botton to top.

Netto, Lidl, Aldi, Somerfield, ........Waitrose

Should have to say that Netto would be equal bottom with Lidl and Aldi. We also have Home Bargains and B&M.

They are all what I would term "junk shops", but in today's cash strapped society, you can get better bargains in them.

Waitrose would be my first choice, and it's not necessarily the most expensive

If you've got the time, you really need to shop around,

valmarg

[valmarg]

I think an example of price difference has to be jars of John West anchovies. I bought four jars of John West anchovies at 49p per jar, Total cost £1.96. Went into Tesco, and exactly the same product was £2.09 per jar. I bought my four jars for £1.60 less per jar. Also I bought my four jars for less than the price of one jar in Tesco. It really does pay to shop around

valmarg

[Eco-Chic]

I love Aldi. It's small so I don't get bored in there and I think their fruit and veg is very competitively priced.

[ginger ninger]

I think its down to every individuals taste and pocket, personal I don't think there's much to choose from price wise from the big boys.
Where I live we have Asda, Aldi, Coop, Lidl, Morrisons, Netto x 2, Tesco Express and Tesco Super Store, to be honest I think out of the lot, the Coop is daylight robbery. But Netto, Aldi and Lidl are cheaper if you don't mind not having brand name's, but I couldn't do my full shop there, not enough choice.
Even though Aldi's Pecan & Maple Syrup Cereal is yummy!

[organic]

You tend to get what you pay for... but in this case I don't say it in reference to product quality.
The food to be found in some of the "rubbish" supermarkets is just the same as in the big ones...

BUT (bet you didn't see that coming)

Coop seems like daylight robbery when compared to Tesco, but only with good reason. They have ethical standards that actually mean something.
The only reason Tesco and the likes are much cheaper - is because they are more than happy to screw their suppliers into the ground.

I read something not too long ago that thanks to a "price war" between some of the bigger supermarkets they were actually paying less for milk than it cost the farmers to get it out of the cows! It's the same story across the board, and they can get away with it! If you were a farmer and had arranged for Tesco to buy your (say) cickens at £1 each and once you were in full swing you were told the price would be changing to 75p each - what can you do but accept, even at a loss?
It's not like you could just sell them elsewhere - the other shops have their suppliers and there's no other way to shift a Tesco-sized order.

Coop on the other hand won't play that game and more power to them for it. Maybe it is daylight robbery (I don't think so), but at least they play fair with their suppliers.

All of that said, I do all the shopping I possibly can at local, independent shops. They need all the support they can get. If they go bust we're stuffed "one choice is no choice".
One shop I go to whenever I can (not all that local but a workers cooperative called Unicorn in Chorlton) is just down the road from a Morrisons. Their organic produce is usually significantly cheaper than Morrisons as they don't apply the same kind of markup to their products. No shareholders to keep happy y'see.

I'm not loaded by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I do believe the major supermarkets have driven food to an artificially and unsustainably low price, and despite the "credit crunch" (which actually doesn't directly affect about 75% of the population!) that's not a good thing. Either paying a bit more, or shopping somewhere with less extortionate margins will get you similar products with ethics, cheaper products with better ethics still or at least slightly more expensive and keeping your local businesses (and so your ability to choose where to shop) alive.


As for the OP...
...I do go to Aldi and the likes for the special offers. So far I've got a table saw (it's taking some tweaking but it will be set up well and working as well as any other soon enough) a bench grinder (slightly underpowered but unless you press too hard it's no problem) a drill press and various other bits and pieces. All incredibly well priced and not the low quality tat you'd expect from a budget supermarket.
The exact same tools sold under different brands (these are "PowerCraft") usually cost significantly more. The drill press was almost half the price of the other-branded equivalents.
Just don't get the biscuit jointer. They don't have the necessary precision and are, by all accounts, completely useless. Tools that need less minute precision tend to be much better, but the BJ is just useless.

SHOP LOCAL!

[vikkib]

One shop I go to whenever I can (not all that local but a workers cooperative called Unicorn in Chorlton) is just down the road from a Morrisons. Their organic produce is usually significantly cheaper than Morrisons as they don't apply the same kind of markup to their products. No shareholders to keep happy y'see.

I remember hearing about Unicorn on Radio 4 a while back. I think they were nominated for a local food supplier type award. It sounded like a great idea - really community driven.

I do my major shopping online with Asda... purely out of convenience. As I work 4 to 6 days a week and leave home before 6.30am and I don't get back 'til gone 6.30pm I don't have the time to go to my local shops a few times a week. On my days off I don't always make the time.

When I was working less days I loved using our local butchers, grocers, bakers, farmer's market etc. and would love to do so again.

I don't mind paying more for better quality and ethically sound produce but there is far less opportunity for me to do so with the hours and days I work and in order for the small suppliers to provide the facilities for me to do so (either longer opening hours or on-line shopping) they would have to increase their overheads and therefore prices even more.

I completely agree that the big supermarkets have made the prices of food artificially low (it shouldn't be possible to buy a whole chicken for £1.50). We've just had a Waitrose open in Colchester so I'm considering buying my fresh produce from them online as they do seem to have a lot higher standards of produce and much better, fairer, relationships with their suppliers.

[ginger ninger]

I am a member of the Co-operative and have been for many years. The cooperative farms are some of the biggest farms in the UK which allows them to be more ethical than most others, I do agree I would pay more for my basket of shopping, but at the moment I'm not working, I joined the "Chicken's out" campaign of H.F.W because In my view all animals that are destined for the table should at least have a happy life before becoming my dinner or anyone else's come to think of it.. But having said that it doesn't alter the fact that The coop is more expensive than most other retailer with good reason.
The coop is the only store that is campaigning for the release of video journalists and political prisoners illegally detained in "Burma" following pro-democracy demonstrations in 2007, and this has to be paid for some how. Now you wouldn't get your corner shop doing that.
I'll get of my soap box now.

[organic]

Vikki
Unicorn really is that good! It's a good job I'm not exactly sold on the "we're causing global warming" thing or I'd be near-suicidal with guilt. A fair few times I've engineered a reason to be in Chrolton (visiting a friend, picking something up from Realcycle, visiting a client with a break right after) just so I have an excuse to pop in there!

Their fruit and veg is all fresh and in season... though they aren't 100% local. Up until last weekend they were still getting some fruit in from Europe (nothing travels much further than that as far as I've noticed) as there was no UK grown ripe ones yet. They put provenance on all the veg labels though. And the price!!!

SEVERAL times I've got a bit carried away in there, bought way more than I planned to and still spent less than I originally expected. One time I "only" had £20 and said "if you get to £20, stop scanning things" (I'd loaded the conveyor belt so he got the important items first)... the whole lot went through and came to about £12... I was gobsmacked.

I do agree about opening hours though. 8-5 makes perfect sense in a world where the man goes to work and a woman does the housekeeping (a full time and fairly difficult job in itself) but in a world where most people work and can't shop at those times, shops that still open with 8-5 hours are missing a trick... they miss another when they close for lunch at the same time people tend to go on theirs.
I don't think it would necessary increase overheads to extend hours though. Not significantly anyway. There'd be an increase in business which (higher turnover) should cover additional staffing costs, while rates and bills would be unchanged (they don't turn fridges off overnight for example). The extra cost of online shopping with them would easilly be covered with a simple delivery fee.
I just hope some local shops catch on before they go under.



Ginger
I agree, ethics don't make it easier to afford!
That said, I've always been more inclined to sacrifice other things before I'll compromise on food. I lived in France (with a vegatarian from Norwich - very good friend I don't see enough of) a while back and money was VERY tight. It came down to a choice between nights out on the town and meat.
I ate like a king (well, a vegetarian king) for a few months and the saving on meat, while it meant going out on the town was a rarity, the saving still left budget for a low-priced crate of relatively good beer which got drunk at a rate of about 1 or 2 a day... which between us made each crate last almost a week and a half. Not bad really.

I take the same approach now.
Since money's been tight I've stopped going to the cinema, almost never see the inside of my local (or the outside, since it's at the end of a dead-end lane) and yet eat like I've got piles of money!

Couldn't agree more about animals - as if killing for food wasn't bad enough (don't worry, I'm a lapsed veggie and it was never a moral issue in the first place) - keeping them in appaling conditions, indoors, is just unacceptable.

Like I want to know my food was grown unmolested in things like dirt and manure, I want to know my meat was out and about doing the things chicken/sheep/cows/pigs/fish do.

I didn't know about the Burma thing. Does the coop have a fund for that kind of thing? Or when something crops up do they just up their prices or cut their profits to pay for it?

[Snadger]

Tesco swedes are £1 each!

I buy a packet of seed for less than the cost of a single swede and supply my family for a year!

PS I bought the swede seeds from Netto at 19p per packet!

[organic]

Tesco swedes are £1 each!

I buy a packet of seed for less than the cost of a single swede and supply my family for a year!

True enlightenment!
It's pretty amazing when you realise how cheaply it can be done.

At first I thought buying seed and paying for my plot might outweigh any savings in shopping, but it turns out so much cheaper it's really quite brilliant!

[miffy]

Our Aldi is in walking distance so if we are buying small amounts we can leave the car and amble round there and the veg comes from farms in the county i live in and is so reasonable, they had packets of spuds last week for 25p, i didn't need any, as still eating ours but that was really good. Also locally grown pumpkins which were pretty huge for 1.49, that is half the price of the big supermarkets.
The Co op has so many fairtrade products and although not cheap if you want ethically sourced items then it is very good for that.

[Two_Sheds]

I didn't know about the Burma thing. Does the coop have a fund for that kind of thing? Or when something crops up do they just up their prices or cut their profits to pay for it?

They have a fund for development projects and such. When I lived in a housing co-op, our rents were split into different funds: one for rent, one for repairs, one for admin costs etc. One was for helping the development of other housing co-ops

[Portland Bill]

We stock up with muesli whenever we go near a Lidl. Excellent stuff and cheaper that inferior stuff elsewhere.