Lidl is an awesome shop where someone could save a good amount of money compared to the traditional supermarkets like Giant and Wegmans.
It has discount priced fruit, veggies, packaged goods, and food in general. It also limited time special products that are often good. The package non-name brands in all various things from yogurt to cereal to bars to cookies is fine as well. The plant milk is good too. I'm glad I can get all that type of stuff, spices, baking basics and basic toiletries cheap compared to a conventional supermarket.
My girlfriend is plantbased so I can't really comment on the recent years meat or cheese quality, as we haven't eaten it for a long time now. But the vegan special items are pretty good when offered.
Lidl has 99% of the benefits of nearby Aldi, which is a very similar competitor but it also has:
+Fresh Bread. The lidl bread is baked right there fresh and is of much higher quality, aldi just gets low quality pre-packaged bread.
+Plantbased items are better and more expansive at Lidl. I can get two types of vegan pizza, Impossible ground meat, beyond sausages, almond-based yogurt (Silk) and various other products daily. Aldi doesn't really have that and I'm not into their daily plantbased offerings. Both places have good vegan specials.
+Salsa. Big fan of the fresh salsa here by Lancaster Farms.
+Weekly specials. I find I buy the weekly specials of both food and non-food items here more often. I still see the higher ticket items more at aldi, recently a $100 table tennis or weights, which is why I still go, but Lidl has more electronics and hardware on sale.
BIG THING though:
+++Self-checkout! Unlike Aldi, I NEVER have to wait here. Well, almost never. I think once in the last year I had to wait 30 seconds. Does anyone like to wait? I know I don't!
+Plus, someone is nearly always at the cash register! Unlike Aldi, where the workers need to be called. So if you don't like self-checkout, you'll get fast service anyway.
My one criticism is they got rid of the small carts a year or so back and only retained the full size ones. Why? But it does't really affect what I get to take home. It's just a hassle in small aisles.
It's a great store where I get most of my grocery needs. I'm not too fussy with brand names or getting exactly what I need like a specific popsicle stick over another or anything like that.
I really love Lidl, it saves me lots of $$$, it's just that competition finally came to town and caught up. Way better than the big box supermarkets! read more