Lidl and Aldi pay grads very well:

https://targetjobs.co.uk/career-sectors/retail-buying-and-merchandising/324077-which-graduate-retail-employer-pays-the-most

Amazing. How did they know you were coming in for your Scottish loaf that the had the foresight to put it somewhere that was so far away from the door.

Because most people need to buy bread, so they make you walk past all the other stuff first. And pipe the smell of the bakery throughout the store.

impatient till operator who wants you to **** off quickly so that they serve the next customer

The tills record how long each transaction takes anmd staf are quizzed retrained if they take to long, thats why they they hand tyou a pile of change as oposed to counting it out.

Thats a point- the milk and bread in my ‘local’ Tesco’s is circa 1/2mile from the initial entrance in the far corner. Up front is two isles full of chocolate and sweet deals, special offers on Whiskey etc.

Because Tesco cares about the nations health. 😆

Bastards. Have you thought of going to your local bakery?

TBH I make my own bread as I am an artisan but I was in Scotland. Under these circumstances its mandatory I return with my own bodyweight in plain loaves.

you work?

As hard as everyone else on STW

I went in the other day a bought some grapes, which were quite near the door.

Appeasing the middle classes I reckon

Because most people need to buy bread, so they make you walk past all the other stuff first. And pipe the smell of the bakery throughout the store.

They were ignorant and we could mock …. till you spoiled it 😥

Shopping should never be a leisurely and relaxed experience

some people do enjoy a good shopping trip, others just want to get the weekly shop done asap and get back to doing something more interesting. If I’m in a rush I can get a big shop done (home-store-home) in under 30mins, I’m quite happy about that.

The tills record how long each transaction takes anmd staf are quizzed retrained if they take to long,

pity they don’t do that at other places, not just supermarkets. Yes not everyone wants rushing through their “shopping experience” or whatever they’re doing, some people want to stand around and chat and pass the time of day, which is fair enough so maybe places could start having different sets of queues, the “schnell! schnell! hurry the **** up” queue for those grumps amongst us and the chatty cheery community* fun based queue for Ernie and those slow buggers who never even start to look for their purse/wallet until the last item is bagged.

*community my arse, supermarket chains are there for one reason, bottom line profits

I hate shopping full stop.
local tesco is too freaking massive with a gazillion products and stupid non offers but I can get out the checkouts with ease (tills, selfservice and mobile scanners).
local aldi is okay as products are consistently and reasonably priced, the selection is just spot and quality is perfectly fine. however, car parks is a nightmare and the checkouts always crap.

much rather do it online and use the local shops for topups

JY it seems to be you and me again on yet another thread 🙂

How do you explain the first point, pension funds are huge holders of UK shares ? They generally have to be hold FTSE index components but can vary the weighting – hence the changes you see in percentages quoted above, Tesco has been a big short/underweight in the market for a while.

Second one, see my earlier post on why the shares are up. The markets pre-judge and estimate corporate earnings announcements, they pre-position. Short term the markets aren’t “infallable” – in fact the term infallable is meaningless in markets terms circumstances change and the market adjusts.

Share ownership is essentially not pensions nor “ordinary” people.

Bit if a a tangent to go off on not least when the share price went up which says a lot about the infallable and rational market.

Did anyone else get upset when Lidl changed their layout a few years back to put the bakery first rather than the heavy stuff like drinks and tins which go in the bottom of your trolley then everything else gets piled on top? I used to get round the store in a very efficient snaking motion with a single perimeter pass for chilled stuff but now I have to go backwards and forwards. Aside from that though its all good, though I have noticed things slipping at Aldi…

Still made an operating profit. Losses count the pensions shortfall and the real estate “losses”. As such, they’ll likely only report this once. The markets know this hence the increase in share value because come next quarter, the new CEO will announce that they’re “back” in profit and be the new messiah.
I still don’t like them, and rue the loss of our high street shops.
I think we’ll see less superstores being built and more distribution hubs as more and more people shop online.

squirrelking showing a worrying lack of trolley layout organisational skills 😉

Which is the nastier/not as good one- Lidl or Aldi? Mrshora keeps telling me ones low(er)-rent than the other.

pipe the smell of the bakery throughout the store.

This isn’t true. Although Thorntons do use aroma packs in their AHUs.
We deal with Aldi, they are good. Much more so than the bigger outfits, and much better run too.

Which is the nastier/not as good one- Lidl or Aldi?

IMO Aldi feels a bit “nicer” to visit but there’s not much in it, if you want a nice shopping experience your better off at Waitrose anyway. The prices and the products are pretty similar, my local Lidl has a bakery which is very good but Aldi is closer to home so that’s where I tend to go.

They were ignorant and we could mock …. till you spoiled it

I place on record my apologies for trampling over your subtle joke.

Which is the nastier/not as good one- Lidl or Aldi?

Is there a quality issue at either? I find the fruit and veg fine at my local Lidl and anything else I buy there too. Recently started working away from home with easiest place to get food nearby being an Aldi – seems much the same to me.

Sounds like some should avoid pa investments at least until accountancy training completed!

So Drastic Dave does the first bit, can he deliver on the hard stuff now. Personally doubt it – Tescos have been Tesco-ed!

The till system at Aldi seems like it’s rushed until people realise you aren’t supposed to bag your shopping at the till.

You are supposed to put it back in the trolley as its scanned, get out of the way, and then bag it at the shelf after the tills.

I’m not sure it’s any faster in total, but I suppose it means the tills take up less room compared to the standard supermarket design.

the “schnell! schnell! hurry the **** up” queue for those grumps amongst us and the chatty cheery community* fun based queue for Ernie and those slow buggers who never even start to look for their purse/wallet until the last item is bagged.

I actually like Aldi, I use them more than I use Tesco. And I’m quite looking forward to the big new Aldi opening near me tomorrow.

But I’m not going to pretend that their checkout system is vastly superior to Tesco’s. Nor that Aldi eating into the Tesco’s share of the market somehow represents a victory for “the small town shops”. And I haven’t yet seen any evidence that this also represents a great victory for suppliers.

I use them more than I use Tesco

You turncoat, have you lost your love for Tesco?

No I still love Tesco. But Aldi is cheaper. Their cat food is silly cheap. I don’t know how they do it. And the cats love the taste of it.

mudshark – Member
Lidl and Aldi pay grads very well:

They do but the work them VERY hard for it (or at least they did around 10-15 years ago when I knew people doing those jobs) – they were working stupid hours on the promise of promotion but the vast majority sacked it in realising what their effective hourly rate ended up as.

I like their “no messing about” attitude to till queue management. The queues can be long but seem to move quickly as no doddering is tolerated. It helps keep costs down too.

And

Lidl and Aldi pay grads very well:

I take it working practices have improved at Lidl then,. or is this “blood money”?

Lidl Black Book….

What i dont get about Aldi/Lidl customers, why do carry boxes into the shop, spend ten minutes packing all their shopping into bags or boxes 2ft from the till they were ejected from, only to trolley over to the car and struggle to lift said box into the boot? Just flipping leave the boxes in the car and pack from the trolley direct into the car? its not raining most of the time.

You are supposed to put it back in the trolley as its scanned, get out of the way, and then bag it at the shelf after the tills.

FWIW I find the best technique is to have three or four big “bag for life” style bags already open and sat in the trolley and then you can do the the “quick fling off the belt and into the trolley” thing and your shopping’s still bagged and ready for the car.

Tesco: Big write down on “book” values of fixed assets which are notional anyway, not a real, cash “loss” at all.

I agree with those saying its just an accounting trick. The new CEO can devalue as much as possible and have poor result that can be blamed on his predicessor. Then he can save the day with improving results in the future. The losses are all due to a ‘revaluation’ exercise designed to come up with the answer they wanted for the accounts

Common sense can be found here:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/22/tesco-posts-record-loss-what-the-experts-say

I don’t like Lidl at all. I like a nice shopping experience, with nice quality stuff and being tempted by interesting looking stuff.

I prefer Waitrose 🙂 Although it must be said Asda seems to have more local stuff, like the cheese.. mm..

You are supposed to put it back in the trolley as its scanned, get out of the way, and then bag it at the shelf after the tills. I’m not sure it’s any faster in total

cardboard box in trolley, one of the Aldi banana ones is best imo, shopping straight into that at till – you did order your goods on the conveyor belt correctly didn’t you? – put box into boot, drive home, carry box into kitchen and unpack. Job done.

FWIW I find the best technique is to have three or four big “bag for life” style bags already open and sat in the trolley and then you can do the the “quick fling off the belt and into the trolley” thing and your shopping’s still bagged and ready for the car.

This is where Tesco have actually got the upper hand. Scan and Shop (or whatever it’s called) where you scan as you go round is brilliant a good step towards making shopping marginally less painful.

Just have a few big bag for life thingies open in the trolley, pick it off the shelf, scan, bag, done. You finish your shop with everything correctly scanned and then just pay and leave. No pesky checkouts at all.

But Tesco’s big issue is they stopped putting the customer first and started putting the shareholder first, hence the perception their offers are trying to trick us into spending more without offering value rather than just being good value. Their huge rise was due to them genuinely being cheaper and giving the customer what they wanted. They forgot about all of this and have become too big and bloated. They will reset, cut costs and offload assets and get back to what they were good at eventually.

Edit: This is great stat: “Aldi UK today generates twice the sales per full-time employee compared to Tesco UK and is expected to report higher trading profits”

It takes lots of people to come up with all those confusing, frustraiting deals. The dificulty for tesco is to know what to get rid of and what to keep. They can’t just copy Aldi and Lidl.

The £600 million of inventory write off is also interesting. Basically the stuff the bought is now worth £600 million less than they thought it was. I.e. That big bloated organisation is not just too big but they are making crappy decisions as well.

No I still love Tesco. But Aldi is cheaper. Their cat food is silly cheap. I don’t know how they do it. And the cats love the taste of it.

Loss leader pricing ? Common technique to price certain everyday items which people buy regularly very cheaply on the basis they will do the rest of their shopping there. For years supermarkets used milk, baked beans and bread etc. Perhaps that’s Aldi’s angle on cat food.

“Aldi UK today generates twice the sales per full-time employee compared to Tesco UK and is expected to report higher trading profits”

Of course. They do this by having less warehouse (if any.. most stock seems to be on the floor so few shelf stackers either), no coffee shop, fewer cleaners by the look of it, no helpers, hardly any checkout staff (in mine at least).

They don’t do the same with less money, they do less with less money. You may be happy with less, but that’s a consumer choice.

They don’t do the same with less money, they do less with less money. You may be happy with less, but that’s a consumer choice.

Well quite.

The point is that all that extra stuff that tesco do isn’t making them any extra money.

Maybe it’s because people aren’t enticed to tesco because they can get a coffee, maybe it’s because tesco aren’t efficient at making coffee?

The situation at the Chesterfield Tesco is probably quite a good case study. There is a huge Tesco Extra, its one of those upstairs ones with the huge long conveyors to endure before you start shopping. Upstairs there is a Costa, at the back of the store up another set of stairs is a cafe. Before you see any food you have to walk past half a department stores worth of home and clothes. So to visit Tesco is a massive pain in the arse due to the size and layout but 5 years ago they were cheap and had a good range so you went, and then bought a load of other crap while you were there.

Now they aren’t cheap and their instock levels are patchy, so the incentive to visit is dimished.

And now next door there is an Aldi, a Costa drive though and an Asda “supermarket” (one of the old Netto’s). You any of these are all more convienent that Tesco and cheaper too. But now maybe you missed out on the clothes and TVs you wanted. The competitors have that covered too as 5 mins down the road is a one stop location for non food with a George (Asda) standalone store, a Next and a Debenhams.

So people aren’t going to Tesco for food so aren’t buying all the other crap they sell on top and they don’t need to go to Tesco as a destination either as others do that better.

Copying the others is nearly impossible as the huge store Tesco have is a huge burden. Their only option is to become a food destination again by beating the discounters, easier said than done (see Morrisons for a case study of why that isn’t a great idea).

Oh and online and click and collect is both necessary to retain customers and stop Occado nicking all the most profitable ones but also completly at odds with Tesco’s requirement to get more people into their stores to buy all of the randon shit they fill their stores with.

Basically they’re screwed and they should have seen it coming!

I’ve tried Lidl a couple of times, but their veg is shit TBH, and I want to be able to have 2-3 of an item, not a bag or net. You can never be sure they’ll have what you want either. Might have, say; coconut milk for instance, but then again they might not, which means another shop another day (usually at one of the big four) where you know they’ll have what you want…so you may as well go there in the first place.

Maybe it’s because people aren’t enticed to tesco because they can get a coffee, maybe it’s because tesco aren’t efficient at making coffee?

Yeah.. Waitrose is better for coffee. They give you a free one and a paper too if you spend over £10 so that’s a winner to begin with.

Tescos vary a lot though. Round our way the two big ones, you come in in the middle and it’s left for food, right for stuff. There’s the St Mellons one though, and that’s very tatty indeed, still got the red and beige colour scheme.

I’ve tried Lidl a couple of times, but their veg is shit TBH,

Where we live it all comes from the same fruit & veg processing company. From the same suppliers, same fields etc. The variable that stores have a little control over is shelf life, so you could save some money by having a 5 day shelf life instead of 3.

Yeah.. Waitrose is better for coffee. They give you a free one and a paper too if you spend over £10 so that’s a winner to begin with.

That’s just at the weekend, only a fiver spend during the week.

But Tesco’s big issue is they stopped putting the customer first and started putting the shareholder first

Very true.

Like another well known (but poorly performing) high street brand*, Tesco has become a storeroom company. That’s to say, management look in the storeroom and say “What can we sell?”, rather than standing outside the front of the shop and saying “Do I want to shop here?”.

There’s a place for no frills, and there’s a place for high end. But there probably isn’t any longer a place for “started with food but now try to do everything but we’re not really sure why”.

*WHSmith – how the hell are they still in business?

Blimey if that is putting the shareholders first, they must be REALLY bad at customer service

Share price -24% over past year and well over £4 5 years ago versus today’s £2.23. Divi close to 5% and a kitchen sink Dave – might be worth a little “nibble” in the value section!