Every week my food shopping brings me a mental battle: walk an extra ten minutes to get to Lidl or walk two minutes down the road to Sainsburys. My lazy side tells me Sainsbury’s, whilst my thrifty student side encourages the walk to Lidl, with the latter usually winning. However when I get to Lidl I often can’t help but wonder how much cheaper the products actually are and if it’s worth the walk. Having discovered mysupermarket.co.uk, a supermarket comparison sight, I decided to find out once and for all.
I started by comparing the basics; things me and my friends eat on a daily basis. The results were revealing, with a £5 difference between the two shops for products that are most probably of similar quality. For me, if I needed to do a large shop, the walk would be worth it. However, looking at the break down of prices for the individual items, it seems that if you’re only looking for one or two items then you won’t save that much by going to Lidl.
I then went on to look at some of the more occasional items, that you might not buy every week but are certainly worth considering. Yet again, the results demonstrate a difference of around £5 between the two shops. Whilst the items below may be of more variable quality, it is clear that there are savings to be made by buying branded items from Lidl, whilst I can personally say that I find Lidl’s Greek yogurt a lot nicer than Sainsbury’s. With this in mind, it’s clear that cutting costs certainly does not equate to inferior quality.
Results
I think it’s safe to say that there are most certainly savings to be made from shopping at Lidl. If you were to buy the above items every week, you could find yourself spending around £300 more in Sainsbury’s (calculated on three ten week terms), which I’m sure we’d all rather put towards a holiday, a new wardrobe, or perhaps some nice meals out!
Having said that, when you’re pushed for time or only looking for one or two items, for a lot of the products listed above the saving is small enough to ignore. And, let’s be honest, when you need chocolate, you’ll probably benefit much more from getting it quickly than saving 66p.
Edited by Angelica Beier