The Supermarket test

The hubby and I shop at Waitrose every week.  It's a little known secret that if you shop at Waitrose online, they're surprisingly cheap as they price match Tesco for brand goods, and on their own brand goods they often have 10% off to My Waitrose customers (it's a card that is free to get, and if you pop in to Waitrose, gets you a free tea or coffee every day).

Knowing that money will be very tight once the baby comes, we're exploring shopping at other stores, so this week we tried Aldi - now, it's not just about money, but it is about quality too.  Next week we're trying Lidl.  The food shop was a bit hit and miss, there were quite a few things (9) that we weren't able to get at Aldi like soya milk and quorn goods which we ended up picking up at Sainsburys, coming to around £25, making the total weekly shop just over £50 - only a £10 saving on Waitrose.

The difference was in the quality.  The fruit I bought from Aldi didn't have expiration dates on, and even though they were refrigerated, they went mouldy within a couple of days - Waitrose fruit on the other hand tends to last a good week or so in the fridge.

Because of my gestational diabetes, one of the breakfasts I've been having most days is fresh fruit with greek yoghurt, and if I can't get fruit that will last at least a few days, it's no good to me.  The biggest winner from Aldi were the new potatoes.  In Waitrose I pay £1.99 for a bag (500g), in Aldi for a bigger bag (750g) it was only 49p and they tasted great, but do we want to have to shop in 3 different places each week to do a complete shop? No.

We did pick up lots of other bits when we were there though, like the baby bits in the pic above - these are left overs from the last Aldi baby event, which was a few months ago.  They were reduced to silly prices, like the bowls being £1.19 for 3, the blanket was just over £1 and the muslin cloths were similar.

For now, as great as some of the things were in Aldi, the quality just wasn't right (like the fruit, and their equivalent of quavers - not great) and there was just too much we weren't able to get there, so we'll see how Lidl fairs next week.


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