Author Topic: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl  (Read 4074 times)

Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« on: 10 August, 2020, 09:02:18 pm »
Has anyone else noticed the recent significant reduction in the range of brands/products availability from the above. I suspect Euro supply contracts are up and are not being renewed due to current undertainties. Baked beans, cabbage and sugar cane here we come, I have taken back control. (treacle was a staple of the poor folk of victorian Englang btw.)
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Andrij

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #1 on: 11 August, 2020, 10:02:06 am »
I noticed it around the time lockdown started.  I thought it was a shift of focus on making sure there were beans to be bought, as opposed to a selection of half a dozen brands of basically the same beans.  Not been in any other chains much since March, so can't compare.
;D  Andrij.  I pronounce you Complete and Utter GIT   :thumbsup:

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #2 on: 11 August, 2020, 10:06:48 am »
I've noticed it in Sainos.
No more French style mayo.
No more vitamin D tabs.
To name but two.

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #3 on: 11 August, 2020, 10:18:09 am »
In times of reduced supply chain function we focus on key brands and reduce range.
"We" being your key-working suppliers to the supermarkets.
It was mostly faux choice anyway.

Fennec

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #4 on: 11 August, 2020, 10:34:35 am »
What fboab said.

My friend works for a well-known food manufacturer. During the PANIC!!! buying nonsense they reduced their range of pasta sauces from approximately 80 to approximately 20, to streamline the supply chain. I don’t think the world suddenly became a much poorer place because of it.

ian

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #5 on: 11 August, 2020, 01:05:19 pm »
Indeed, faux choice is the perennial gift of the supermarkets. Aisles full of products that are mostly just brands, while at the same time reducing overall choice because it's easier and cheaper for them.

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #6 on: 11 August, 2020, 01:15:33 pm »
Aisles full of products that are mostly just brands,

Often made in the same factory.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

hellymedic

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #7 on: 11 August, 2020, 01:49:56 pm »
I've noticed it in Sainos.
No more French style mayo.
No more vitamin D tabs.
To name but two.

Sainos supplied me with 180 x 25 microgram Vitamin D tablets a few weeks ago, for all of £6.

Sainsbury's own brand wholewheat spaghetti is another matter...

fuaran

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #8 on: 11 August, 2020, 01:57:29 pm »
Lidl and Aldi don't have much faux choice anyway. Usually just a couple of options for most things, cheap vs premium.

I've not noticed any particular shortages in my local Lidl. There was an empty freezer cabinet last week, but maybe that was just broken.

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #9 on: 11 August, 2020, 02:08:59 pm »
The good lady wife commented on the lack of ice cream selection in Lidl last night but that may be as she was shopping at around 2030 on a rather hot day in a sequence of similar hot days

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #10 on: 11 August, 2020, 02:14:23 pm »
Lidl and Aldi don't have much faux choice anyway. Usually just a couple of options for most things, cheap vs premium.

I've not noticed any particular shortages in my local Lidl.

Same here. On the other hand, when things like pasta and flour were in short supply, I noticed that my local Tesco had one faux brand of each. Now that the panic buyers have realised they have enough supplies to last until 2040, and the usual range is back on the shelves, these are "reduced to clear".

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #11 on: 02 September, 2020, 09:00:59 pm »
Gorgonzola has now disappeared from both and kitchen towel has been substituted for a poorer quality British made job.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

robgul

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #12 on: 02 September, 2020, 09:22:10 pm »
Wasn't the rationalisation of product varieties/brands something that all the supermarket chains did when the Covid thing kicked off - to ensure that there was food, if not the "my brand" choice?   

Aldi & Lidl have been doing this for years anyway with limited ranges of most products/product types - reduced logistics with a smaller supply chain enabling keener prices from manufacturers with increased volumes/economies of scale and (even my wife admits) no real difference in most things.  Makes sense to me.

I believe I read that at the start of 2020 Tesco (not picking on them) had about 50 pasta products and 60 or so sausage varieties?

The TV prog that Gregg Wallace does with the food shopping is interesting ..... stupendous savings (although one has to consider the people participating . . . .) with, in most cases, no real difference to the end consumer - and many of the value/essential/"remarksable" (God help us the M&S economy brand at Ocado) etc are made on the same factory's manufacturing lines with either just different labels/packaging or marginally different ingredients.

citoyen

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #13 on: 03 September, 2020, 10:31:48 am »
Lidl and Aldi don't have much faux choice anyway. Usually just a couple of options for most things, cheap vs premium.

I've not noticed any particular shortages in my local Lidl.

Same here. On the other hand, when things like pasta and flour were in short supply, I noticed that my local Tesco had one faux brand of each. Now that the panic buyers have realised they have enough supplies to last until 2040, and the usual range is back on the shelves, these are "reduced to clear".
Just been in my local Sainsbury’s. Massive stack by the entrance of 2.6kg tins of beans reduced to clear.

If only I was organising an audax this year...
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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #14 on: 03 September, 2020, 10:44:35 am »
The TV prog that Gregg Wallace does with the food shopping is interesting ..... stupendous savings (although one has to consider the people participating . . . .) with, in most cases, no real difference to the end consumer - and many of the value/essential/"remarksable" (God help us the M&S economy brand at Ocado) etc are made on the same factory's manufacturing lines with either just different labels/packaging or marginally different ingredients.
This 'same factory line' thing is quite misleading. We run very superficially similar products down our lines but they really aren't the same. Marginally different ingredients can be pretty fundamental differences. And, to be honest, those packaging differences make a difference too - not just in shelf appeal but in product transit protection.

hellymedic

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #15 on: 03 September, 2020, 09:11:01 pm »
Jacob's Cream Crackers 300g £1.20
Sainsbury's Cream Crackers 300g 50p

Can you tell the difference?

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #16 on: 03 September, 2020, 09:19:11 pm »
Yes, I can but I don't think it's worth 70p.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #17 on: 03 September, 2020, 09:52:36 pm »
Aren't all cream crackers just some kind of compressed cardboard? Do people actually eat them? They were one of the more pointless things of my childhood and not something I'd like to contemplate as a grown-up. If I want cheese and crackers, I don't faff, I reach for the mighty Tuck.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #18 on: 03 September, 2020, 09:58:57 pm »
Who wants cheese and crackers, for goodness' sake?  Mad people, that's who.  If the Cheese Fairies had meant us to eat the stuff with crackers they wouldn’t have given us bread.
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Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #19 on: 03 September, 2020, 10:52:02 pm »
Who wants cheese and crackers? She does!
https://freschard.bandcamp.com/track/cheese-and-crackers
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

arabella

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #20 on: 09 September, 2020, 12:20:39 pm »
I like water biscuits.  Made of flour and water.
Apparently they were based on sailors' hard tack. 
Any fool can admire a mountain.  It takes real discernment to appreciate the fens.

hellymedic

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #21 on: 09 September, 2020, 03:01:26 pm »
I like water biscuits.  Made of flour and water.
Apparently they were based on sailors' hard tack.

Matzos are similar but based on the OT...

robgul

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Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #22 on: 09 September, 2020, 04:26:54 pm »
Who wants cheese and crackers, for goodness' sake?  Mad people, that's who.  If the Cheese Fairies had meant us to eat the stuff with crackers they wouldn’t have given us bread.

No, no - the ONLY thing to have with cheese is digestive biscuits (not chocolate!) - or as a fall-back Hovis biscuits.

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #23 on: 18 September, 2020, 12:30:33 pm »
Some products have re-emerged (not all), but at differing price points.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Reducing choice Aldi and Lidl
« Reply #24 on: 22 September, 2020, 09:22:07 am »
Sainsbury's don't have the range of pulses they had pre-Covid. We have been unable to buy dried black beans in there. There's not even a marker on the shelf for them, they had tinned (well cardboard packaged). Waitrose had some so we bought theirs instead.
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