Lidl No More

A new Lidl grocery store just opened in the neighborhood. Before it opened there was a huge media blitz to bring in the customers. A coupon arrived in the mail for dollars off over a month period of time. Although we felt bad about abandoning our familiar Giant store, we went in to test the waters. If they don’t have the bread products we like then they are out of luck - and they didn’t. But we did find a few things that were cheaper - crab cakes to name one. Some of the tomatoes and fish items were good. But the chocolate chip cookies and chocolate wafer cookies rang flat. The crab cakes had more other stuff in them than crab even though it was the brand we always get. The coffee was good. I suppose half of what we got we liked or were neutral about. The other half we didn’t care for. We ended up going to Giant anyway to get bread and some vegetables. I’m sure another reason was the store was unfamiliar - the lay out and the brands. Since we went to Lidl we noticed that Giant is having more discounts to compete. In the end that’s what it’s all about anyway. But in our household it is the bread that wins our hearts. And for that Giant has the upper hand. 

Lidl Grocery Store

They’ve been renovating the old Safeway grocery store in our neighborhood for more than a year. It is being replaced by a Lidl. There is also room for three retail spaces - two of them will be restaurants. We don’t know much about Lidl, but have walked by it at least every week on our morning walk. The signs for hiring were up quite a while ago and the grand opening was last week. In the mail we received coupons for ten dollars off the first three weeks if you spend at least forty dollars. So we thought we would give it a try yesterday. It looks kind of like a small Costco inside. There is nothing fancy about it and it will take a bit to get used to the geography and products. We knew right away that we probably won’t be going there as our go to because it didn’t have the French bread or angel food cake that are staples in our house. But it did have crab cakes and fresh fish and some fruit we like. There were some products in different brands that we will try. There were some great wafer cookies with chocolate that my husband might like. We did get our savings at the register but we still needed to go to Giant for the other things we needed. Depending on how we like the rest of the stuff we picked out will dictate if we return. We are creatures of habit, but I think we will at least use the weekly coupons until they run out.