For the first time in two years, Aldi has been knocked off the top spot as the UK’s cheapest supermarket – its main rival, Lidl, stealing the crown. And I, for one, am cheering it on – with a ratchet rattle found in the middle aisle in between a basket of knock-off Crocs and a stack of whisky-flavoured BBQ sauce, of course.
The only naysayers are those who not only have the funds to drift through the spacious walkways of Waitrose, foraging a multigrain sourdough here, a ylang ylang and geranium eye cream there, they are also shoppers who entirely lack imagination.
While they rely on trusted brand names and royal warrants, we Wild West Lidl-lovers enjoy nothing more than a trolley piled with a kilo of 40p carrots, a set of outdoor lights and a box of ludicrously affordable dog treats.
The minute I enter, the fruit and veg aisle lifts my spirits, the way I used to feel standing at the entrance to a dimly lit nightclub, hearing the throbbing beat and knowing I was about to have a great time. Now, it’s all about throbbingly cheap beets, along with giant watermelons, fancy berries and oranges with the leaves still on – which I buy for the full “fruit-bowl influencer” styling opportunity they afford. It’s possible to fill half the trolley with stuff that looks like a “wellbeing” food shoot without breaking 10 quid.
I’m equally drawn to the foreign cheese selection, which changes from week to week like the weather (Reblochon! Dolcelatte! Welsh goat!) and the astonishingly cheap prawns the size of small bananas (I think they’re sustainably caught. Look, I’m sure they are.)
But it’s the sheer variety of people to be found in Lidl that accounts for its success. The most recent demographic to discover its charms are the gym-bros – the supermarket’s range of protein-filled yoghurts and snack bars has proven a particularly savvy move, fuelling its success and their workouts.
The “Middle of Lidl”, though, is the place for the real heads: the zone where hurrying grocery-snatchers miss out on a world of joy.
Beyond the crisps – but before the frozen pavlovas – there are rows of items that have no other home in the world. We’re talking electric drying racks, pastel-hued birdhouses, colouring pencils, fleecy blankets, and scented candles that could very easily be Jo Malone if you close your eyes and don’t breathe in too deeply.
The contents of The Middle change on a weekly basis, too, so if you miss the carpet washer or the wasabi sauce or the masonry drill, you sadly might never see it again. This cunningly aids impulsive purchases because, as every ad person knows, scarcity sells.
What doesn’t disappear, however, is the extensive booze selection, with its colourful bottles of spirits (only bearing a passing resemblance to name brands that may or may not have similar labels). The prices are just high enough to ensure you’re not buying antifreeze, but low enough to make any passing customer (me) think, “Another bottle of wine? Why not?”
Lest this be straying a little close to an unpaid advert, there are also a handful of Lidl negatives. Unless you have a deep, instinctive understanding of the till system, you’ll be a blundering tourist lost in the Tokyo underground.
Nobody explains that the checkout person will spin-bowl your shopping into a smoking pile and expect you to dump it all back in the trolley to pack elsewhere. If you don’t move like Mo Farah, you’ll have a fuming queue behind you.
The loyalty card is equally impossible (for me) to navigate. I can’t tell my offers from money off, so I don’t redeem either. And worst of all, for the middle-class shopper: there are only two types of hummus.
But it’s cheap, it’s simple, it does the job with brisk, Teutonic efficiency. And the chocolate is, frankly, amazing.
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