I’m surprised that Aldi & Lidl have only 12.4% of the market to be honest. Would have thought they would have had a higher market share.

I’d say it’s because of the bad quality of food in Lidl and Aldi (or perceived bad quality). Also, Aldi and Lidl aren’t in convenient locations -you have to have a car to shop there, unlike Tesco.

Tesco is expensive, it’s nothing new I’m afraid.
Only if you go for sales /double pack, reduced items you are able to achieve better value than Aldi / Lidl.
But that way they make you buy things not that you want, but things they want you to buy.
What I find annyoing is that HUGE tesco shop close to me does not even have decent bakery, limited choice and hardly ever fresh later than in the very morning.
Much better stuff in Dunnes, Super Quinn and recently Lidl.

Mmm chocolate croissant….

They got rid of the ham and cheese croissants though! I’ve lost two stone since, it’s not fair!

There is one thing I love about Aldi and Lidl.
The checkout staff is fast as lightning.
Tesco has much to learn in this department. And others.

I’ve seen flies crawling over the baked goods in my local Lidl like three or four times…

Yes, lidl have those flies seriously over worked pat…

True, but I think most of the meat, dairy and veg in aldi is Irish produce, so its not all bad news. Most Irish stuff here than other retailers, esp tesco.

Correct, but even German owned chains (Aldi, Lidl..) source most stuff they sell here locally. It’s too big cost to import from Germany, etc. wouldn’t make any sense. Some food they have is imported and so it is in any other chain, even Irish chain. I honestly don’t think any of those big companies irish or non -Irish cares if they support local economy, this is just bull…. to print on their leaflets. Reality is they would always go where is cheaper / logistically easier.

The butchers counter in my local supervalu is brilliant. The quality of the meat and fish is excellent

Its pleasantly surprising how much Irish produce is available in Aldi, its a big factor in why I swapped to shop there after becoming revolted by the stories of the ‘big three’ and how they treat local suppliers. In tandem with the ‘Value for Money’ articles in the Irish Times regularly coming out with Aldi products on top for quality and price I decided to give it a try and haven’t looked back since. Just look at the Blas na hEireann awards for quality irish food – Aldi have more winning products from their suppliers than any other supermarket. All the fresh produce is labelled for origin and it just takes paying attention to select the locally grown stuff.

Its not only about the retailers bottom line profits, food grown and produced in our own country creates jobs and when suppliers have to fight questionable practises and bullying by the ‘big’ supermarkets (90days credit terms on fresh produce… really?! Huge fees to have them grace their shelves with your product?) which stifles their ability to grow, its a lifeline for some of the artisan suppliers to have a nationwide network of retailers to stock their produce. The Select range in Aldi is fantastic, and keeps my nationalist conscience, my budget and my little foody heart happy.

http://www.aldi.ie/ie/html/product_range/best_of_ireland.htm

Mark stop it, I’m in Germany at the moment and I’d sell my Granny for some of those sausages in soft rolls with kerrygold

Agreed !

You can get some nice German sausage :)

Amazing sausages – shame their not Irish though – no bord bia quality assurance mark :(

Off topic, but you can buy whole cartons of tayto from their website and they’ll past them to anywhere in the world! German sausages aren’t bad, just…. um, different :-)

German sausage is the dog’s bollox, Irish sausage is bollox – it’s mostly bread.

German sausage is the dog’s bollox, Irish sausage is bollox – it’s mostly breadcrumbs.

mmm i love German sausage inside me.

Tesco in Tramore is the pits for choice and surly staff and one has to go into the 24 hour Waterford shop for said choice. Lidl is fine. Supervalu is always well supported by locals though not the ‘super value’ they proport to be.

You get what ya pay for. I get paid monthly so I do a big shop in Superquinn one week and get loadsa meat n stuff and then can top up each week with Aldi/Lidl. It’s great. You really can’t beat Superquinn for fresh food but it is more expensive. I never used to shop in Aldi/Lidl until recently but I’m pleasantly surprised. Snobbery gone!! ;)

There are still some things I can’t get in Lidl. Asparagus for instance.

Damocles, perhaps you could choose food that is in season locally. Better for the enviroment and better for local producers (wink wink).

I like asparagus. I was in one the other day and they had no aubergines. It was scandalous.

That’s weird, I get asparagus in my local lidl

Centra is good value? How long did I sleep?

Centra, Londis, Spar… no way they are the cheapest, but what they often do is some good price on selected products. If you buy food for 1 week, big basket, I can’t see a way you buy cheaper there. But if you drop in after work to pickup couple things then yes you may be able to even save a bit for same / similar product bought in big supermarket – depends on what they have on that day, etc. And let’s be honest, they are handy for small shopping, snack, newspaper, etc. I’m sick of the thought of getting into huge supermarket, 2 mile in store walk and 10 mins queuing to get milk lol.

You would think that when asda Enniskillen saw the amount of Irish driving up on a weekly basis that they might have a market in the south.

We should email them, all of us.

http://your.asda.com/contact-us

With the government talking about increasing supermarket sizes they could really clean up.

Carrefour are excellent as well

If anyone is thinking of contacting Asda make sure you tell them to open their first store in South Dublin.

Cheers.

@pierce totally agree with you on Carrefour, I nearly passed out when I got to their cheese counter! I was in blue heaven! Blue cheese that is!!!

If you like meat and don’t mind trying new recipes, these type of butcher’s offers are great. Some farmers/distributes do the same with veg, you get a big box with whatever’s seasonal for a fixed price. It’s also worth going in with three other families and buying a whole cow/pig, the farmer will probably organise the animal to be butchered, and they’ll make sausages from the scrapings if you want. You’d need a deep freeze though.

Eimear,are you Conor Pope in disguise?

Potatoes going up everywhere due to the bad potato blight this year.

They are €5 in Lidl for 7.5kg, you can get 10kg for €5 in Iceland.

If you want decent tinned curry type foods get yourself out to Aroma Foods in Clondalkin.

Generally a good bet to buy a massive bag of rice while you’re there to save money, should last you at least a year.

It’s more like €705million in 2010, which is excellent.

your fairly pullin 3billion out of somewhere dark. But none the less fair play to them and the likes of McDonalds. I’m pretty sure Musgrave does its fair share of exporting to its Spanish stores..

While Tesco annoy me at times it can’t be ignored that they do stock a vast amount of Irish produce. Take their own brand milk for example which is something like 90c and it supports the national dairy council i.e. Irish dairy farmers. Yet the so called Irish Dunnes Stores and Superquinn own brand milk doesn’t support Irish dairy farmers as it hasn’t got the NDC logo on it – If it doesn’t have that then it’s not Irish milk your drinking. The little shamrock sign superquinn use on their milk is deceiving – It means the milk could have been packaged in Ireland but certainly wasn’t produced here! I was also shocked to notice that Superquinns famous sausagaes don’t have the bord bia quality assurance mark on them – again their not irish. People need to be careful to take note of little thinks like that – there’s a lot of snobbery towards Tescos but where else provides cheap Irish made own brand products.

Regards Aldi and Lidle being cheaper for stuff, I think there’s a select few things that can be cheaper like washing up stuff and they do affordable fish that tastes good unlike the Tesco one, however if your lucky to have a big Tescos beside you then often they’ve loads of products of a similar price – you just need to search down on the bottom shelf and not pick up what’s at eye level. I go around the supermarket with a calculator most times to keep my spending in check and I would say that everytime Tesco, Aldi and Lidle come out on top for me. But then a massive amount depends on what you buy! The healthier your basket the easier it is to buy cheap!

Supervalu Tramore The best…

@poppysmith- some food for thought there (pun intended), but completely disagree with your last sentence.

@Timmy..What? “The healthier your basket the easier it is to buy cheap” – I’m curious as to why you’d disagree with that – fresh fruit and veg is cheap – bag of carrots in Tesco’s 99c, Mushrooms 99c/sometimes 79c, lettuce, peppers, onions – all cheap. Tin of chopped tomatoes 49c – used to make any tomato based sauce (spag bol, chille, lasagna, faitis) instead of using the more expensive and less healthier jar options which can cost a fortune. Spices and seasoning to make the sauces is a little more ‘pricey’ at 1-2 euro but they’l last for ages. Low cal spray oil – again cheaper than regular oil, does exactly the same thing but for a fraction of the cals and the price – I could go on and on! Healthier food is so much cheaper, as is making your own sauces ect which is actually a lot easier than people realise! I don’t see a massive variation between Tesco, Aldi and Lidle because the foods I buy tend to be the same price in all stores – meat and fish are the only things I tend to look out for deals on

@poppysmith- what i meant was buying fresh fruit and veg in irish supermarkets is not cheap compared to other countries. i agree that making your own food from scratch is infinitely better than consuming cook from frozen microwave s***e. you can make an infinite number of things if you have a couple of cans of tomatoes and some fresh veg.

Nice try Supervalu..

Dunnes in Swords has to be the biggest dump in Ireland! The amount of times I was overcharged in there was crazy! When you go back to complain, they tell you it’s down to staff shortages or the person in charge of pricing not turning up for work! I had to give it up!

i don’t work for supervalu . I just find it the cheapest in my area.

Maybe it was you…

Maybe it was. Ill be sure to wrap bubble wrap around my fingers the next time!:)

could be does Germ?n chickens had flu

Maybe they were battery hen eggs & they happened to eggspire when you took them out of the box…

When the shells are weak it’s because the chicken didn’t have enough calcium in their diet.

Don’t buy tins of curry. Make your own curry. It’s cheaper and nicer.

3rd times a charm.