The vast money that companies spend on establishing their brands really works. We come to believe that a certain brand is the gold standard and everything else falls in behind it, usable or edible perhaps, but simply not as good. More often than not this has nothing to do with our experience of the alternatives, but because that idea has been so effectively fixed in our minds.

I’m very, very fussy about sausages. I love Superquinn’s sausages and they’ve been one of the things that keep me going back there.

So for all the time I’ve been shopping in Lidl, two years and counting, I never even tried their Irish sausages. I just assumed they’d be awful. Until Saturday.

I bought 9 premium pork sausages, which are 86% pork, for €1.99. They were absolutely gorgeous. I’d go as far as saying they might even be nicer than Superquinn’s.

I feel like a complete idiot for not trying them before now, but I’m not alone.

Ireland: Officially Brand Addicted

A report published in 2007 confirmed what has long been known by marketers - that Irish consumers are far more loyal to brands than their counterparts in Europe, with well over half of shoppers sticking to the brands they know and not shopping around.

To put this in context, only 8% of Norwegians were found to stick consistently to known products.

It may not be the only reason, but there is some justification for the comment from the survey’s author that: “this loyalty may help to explain why Irish people pay higher grocery bills than their European neighbours, as branded products are not being replaced with cheaper alternatives.”

Change is happening already. For one thing the clear trend in the survey is that the younger the consumer the more fragile the brand loyalty. And of course the coming to the market of Lidl and Aldi has definitely caused a drift away from better known brands. But it’s still a slow change.

Try Something Different

The other day I watched two women in succession pause in front of a display of dishwasher tablets, consider their options, and choose a box of Finish All in One at €8.99 for 30 tablets over a box of Lidl’s own brand W5 Perfect 5 tabs at €4.29 for 10 tablets more.

Now I’ve been using the Lidl ones for a long time, as have many people I know, and they totally do the job and do it very well indeed. You could see the women struggle to believe this, perhaps even because of the huge price difference. It’s quite hard to believe that something costing about a third of the price could be anything like as good as something you just ‘know’ is the best.

But if you use your dishwasher once a day, making this simple switch could save you almost €70 in a year - just on washing up! It may not seem like a fortune, but repeat a similar saving with 3 more items and it would be the equivalent of about a 1% rise in take home pay for someone on the average industrial wage. As the old adage goes, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So, here is a challenge for you: this week step outside your comfort zone, jettison one of the brands you have steadfastly stuck to and buy a cheaper alternative, not necessarily in Lidl, anywhere you like.

Sure, it may be a disaster. On Saturday, as well as the sausages, I also tried Lidl’s Toppers Diet Coke and I won’t be doing that again. But there are bound to be some revelations also.

Come back and share your experience - pooling our knowledge will make cannier shoppers of us all.

Tags: Brands, Diswasher Tablets, Prices, Sausages
Posted in Wasting Money | 24 Comments »

Fascinating isn’t it? My own shopping is boring as it changes so little so I can never resist a peek at someone else’s trolley.

Today the trolley I picked at Lidl had someone’s till receipt in it, a very long one, so obviously someone shopping for more people than I do. In fact it looks like a fairly typical family shopping basket.

I’m giving you the chance to be nosy too and have reproduced it below, organised into categories to make it easier to visualise.

I’m not telling you the the total price though - have a guess, how much do you think this lot cost? I’m not sure of the weight of some items so you’ll have to guess wildly now and then, but if you shop elsewhere this is a chance to do a quick comparative tot.

The last item gives you an idea of the volume of this shop, they are pretty roomy carrier bags.

I’ll repost the list on Monday, with prices.

Tags: Prices, Shopping Basket
Posted in Shopping Baskets | 9 Comments »

This morning was one of those chaotic ones where it’s a surprise that breakfast even happens.

It did though and we had Cheese Omelette, made with 4 eggs and 120g or 4 oz of cheese - yes, it was very cheesy. I completely forgot to photograph it, but I think you know what a cheese omelette looks like. We also finished off the yogurt from yesterday, it was too good to resist, which means it was a relatively expensive breakfast compared to the last couple of days.

Cost: 4 eggs 54c; Cheese 76c; yogurt €1.20. Total: €2.50  - yikes!

The budget was saved somewhat by the fact that he was being taken out for lunch at work, which probably cost enough to feed us for at least half a week! Is that cheating? I don’t think so. I think if you’re on a tight budget you’re unlikely to turn up your nose at free food. And Gavin will be pleased that he at least got one decent meal this week!

I had tuna with radish and a couple of cos leaves on crisp bread, and a slice of Galia Melon.

I only ate half the tin of tuna, so will probably have the much the same tomorrow. This worked out quite a bit cheaper than I expected when I totted it up, it seems remarkable value to me for what was a pretty nice lunch.

I needed some turnip for dinner tonight and some chilis and beans for tomorrow,  so I took a trip over to Lidl in the afternoon to top up.

It was interesting. They are definitely responding to the Tesco price reductions and a good few items that I bought last time are cheaper now, if only by a few cent. Is this the start of a price war?

Also I can confirm what Alt_k9 said, organic courgettes are cheaper than ordinary ones at the moment, €1.45 as against €1.65 for about the same amount.

Anyway, this is my top up shopping basket:

All of which reduces the kitty to €6.90, with 4 days left. But I think that’s fine.

On to dinner, which was grilled gammon, sautéed cabbage with caramelised onions and turnip mash. Comfort food - simple but tasty.

Though you can just bung gammon under the grill and be ready to eat in minutes, I tend to give it a little love and attention first and it’s the better for it.

I find gammon - and not just Lidl’s - a bit overly salty, so before cooking it, I put it into a saucepan of cold water, bring it just to the boil, pour off the boiling water then rinse it in some cold water. I don’t know whether I’m commiting some heineous food safety sin by heating the gammon, without fully cooking it, like this, but I’ve been doing it for years and we’re all ok so far.

Once the gammon is drained, I brush both sides of the steaks with a mixture of seseme oil, a little soy sauce and a good pinch of ground cloves before grilling. Sometimes I’ll leave it to soak in for a while, anything from 10-30 minutes, sometime I’ll grill right away. The result isn’t some sort of odd chinese gammon, it just gives a pleasant edge to the flavour and means it browns nicely under the grill.

The cost for dinner breaks down as follows: Gammon €1.99; cabbage 33c; turnip 25c; onion 9c.

Turnip is such a good deal. I admit that occasionally when I’m in a hurry I buy Mash Direct’s mashed turnip. While it is very nice and very handy, the half turnip I used tonight made easily as much as is in a pack that costs around €2.30. Over €2 is quite a lot to pay just to avoid cutting up a turnip and throwing it into a saucepan of water.

In any case, to-day ended up the cheapest day so far, at €5.81, thanks to the free lunch!

Tags: Gammon, Prices, Tuna, Turnip, €50 Challenge
Posted in Shopping Baskets, €50 Challenge | 5 Comments »

I can’t help popping into shops this week, both online and off, and comparing prices.

I decided to run my basket for the week though the two main retailers who are online, Tesco and Superquinn. I haven’t the energy to trudge around shops that are not online doing the same.

When I did my shop for this challenge I’d no thought in my mind of making a direct comparison with anywhere else - I just bought the things I like to eat and which seemed good value. It’s all too easy for retailers to cherry pick a shopping basket that shows them in a good light and this definitely isn’t that sort of basket. But on the other hand this is just my basket - your’s could give a completely different result.

How I Shopped

When shopping in different stores, it isn’t always possible to match items exactly on either brand or pack size, so this was the strategy I adopted:

• I chose the cheapest available option I could find for every item on my list.
• Where pack sizes differed, as they do, I chose the nearest size or bought multiple packs in some cases to make up the right weight.
• I weighed my Lidl purchases in cases where comparable products were sold only by weight and not per pack.
• I left out the bread that I bought in Lidl - I just couldn’t find a similar one.

So, here is how it went.

A few notes are appropriate here on each of the online shops.

Tesco Online

The total came to €3.13 more than Lidl, although there were quite a few things where the pack size was smaller (which I have detailed in the list). Tesco have been advertising their new value ranges and it was really interesting how closely they now match Lidl’s prices on a lot of common items - they were often precisely the same.

The two things that bumped them up were the melon and the Chorizo, if you exclude them and allow for differences in pack size, Tesco probably came in around the same price as Lidl or at least with a very marginal difference.

The best buy in Tesco?

The salted peanuts at 29c for 200g, which is about half the price of peanuts in Lidl where I already thought them a great bargain.

Superquinn Online

The total came to a whopping €27.27 more than Lidl, and again there were items where the pack size was smaller.

A proviso I must add though is that the Superquinn online store is a real pig to shop in - if I did shop online I’d go with Tesco every time. It was not easy to either find products, to locate the cheapest products or to compute pack sizes/weights, in fact it was very difficult. I truly did my utmost to make valid comparisons and to choose the cheapest options, but it may well be that I could have shaved a few euro off if I was shopping in an actual store.

I do actually shop in Superquinn quite often, I like shopping there plus they have a great reduced shelf where you can often get items at up to 60% off, so again being in store could have saved me money.

But nothing like €27.27.

The best buy in Superquinn?

There wasn’t one - everything was more expensive.

Be back later with the menus for day three of the €50 challenge!

Tags: Prices, Shopping Basket, €50 Challenge
Posted in Shopping Baskets, €50 Challenge | 5 Comments »

Before I get into the shopping there are a couple of things I should mention:

1. We eat low-carb

Which means filling up on rice, potato, pasta and bread, often the key to making a low food budget work, isn’t an option. I’m not getting into a discussion about low-carb eating now, though I may at another time, but for this week it’ll be more moderate than really low.

2. How bare is the cupboard?

Eating low-carb means that the general truth, mentioned by Grannymar, that there is usually enough in any cupboard to live on for a week without spending anything at all does not really apply. Apart from seasonings and a few jars of things like pesto and mayo, pretty much everything we eat is perishable, there is no stockpile.

But I am assuming that ordinary stuff is in the cupboard - salt, olive and/or other oils, sugar or an alternative, various flavorings and seasonings. The sort of stuff most people have. I won’t buy any of these things this week, but will rely on what’s there already.

Now, the shopping basket. Sorry it’s a day late, but Saturday sort of got away on me, so we’ll start the seven days tomorrow, Monday.

I spent €36.65 of my €50 budget, and this is what I got.

I’m pretty happy with that. I know I’ll need to top up on a few things later in the week, but I have €13.35 in the kitty still, which seems like enough.

I’m having minor guilt over the eggs - I do usually buy free-range and these definitely aren’t - but the budget is key this week so it seemed the right way to go. Six free range eggs in Lidl would have cost €1.69.

Tags: How to Shop, Prices, Shopping Basket, €50 Challenge
Posted in Shopping Baskets, €50 Challenge | 11 Comments »