Most prefer the bargain basement to snob value

There may be buckets of bargains at Lidl and Aldi but someone, somewhere is paying

There may be buckets of bargains at Lidl and Aldi but someone, somewhere is paying

THE FIRST I heard of the phenomenon was a few years ago, when a friend informed me the Foxrock Fionas were at it wholesale. Range Rover loads of them would drive down, stock up on dinky bickies, Serrano hams and crates of dirt-cheap sparkling water. Platters of exotic little nibbles were proffered over coffee and over time word got out.

Soon other, lesser mortals whisperingly began to admit to an addiction of sorts: the eco-brother loved the “specials” and has ended up with an un-eco-friendly garage bursting with unused gadgets, a loaded in-law adored the German food (though he was always a bit peculiar, this fella), the mums who swore by the popcorn, crisps, juices and gargantuan bags of sweeties for kids’ birthday parties.

Admittedly I was reluctant to try it at first, hating the drudgery of it at the best of times, but eventually the informed friend whisked me to Lidl in Arklow, for there was no nearer outlet to me at the time. And once bitten by the Germanic discount bug, it became a fairly regular habit, a monthly trip and, as with all the best memories of halcyon, bygone days, the sun always shone on the N11. We were paying attention and doing what our Government had told us to do – we were shopping around, hunting down bargains, feeling smart, thrifty and amazed that everyone hadn’t cottoned on at the same time.

READ MORE

Slowly Lidl Ireland began its east coast expansion and crept up first to Wicklow town then onwards towards Dublin, till soon there was not one but two stores in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown and no longer was there a pressing need for the recce to Arklow and the camaraderie and the munching of the butter shortcake and the grumbling of the bored toddlers on the way home ceased.

After a prolonged break (because I can always think of better things to do than supermarket shopping), I was back in Lidl last week only to discover the car park overrun with massive SUVs and the aisles jammed with lads yah, yahing into mobiles. “Ya Seb, get down here now, there’s loike tons of the stuff, but it’s shifting fast.”

Lidl had a diving special recently and was selling wetsuits and diving equipment for half nothing. Every surfer and diver dude in south Dublin had facebooked their friends and they were in bulk buying their gear for the next few seasons. The same thing happened when they had an equestrian sports promotion and horsey types dumped their standards the minute they saw the prices. Riding helmets, crops, boots and horse blankets were flying off the shelves.

Recently it’s become apparent that the burning issue of the day has nothing to do with new taoisigh or flatlining property prices or even climate change; to Lidl or not to Lidl, that is the question. Perfectly reasonable people become highly excited at the inference that they would cross the threshold of a Lidl, or its minutely more upmarket version, Aldi.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go in there,” says one man at a dinner party. “What can you get there anyway, only weird, own-brand food?”

It seems we are used to the cachet of classy shopping, we like to be seduced into parting with our readies and there’s little seduction going on in the gloomy, utilitarian, Soviet-type warehouses of these discount stores.

Another man trumpets his fondness for the cold meats section and declares the reason so many people say they don’t shop there is pure middle-class snobbery. Then his wife, appropriately enough named Fiona, gives a nifty description of the gallons of sparkling water she has stored at home. She is vegetarian and is quite taken with the organic food section.

Her husband is right, of course – it is snobbery at work. It is comic the efforts some go to to hide their habits, as if it’s a dirty little secret. The same skulduggery often goes on in relation to Penneys, which is thriving, and Ikea, also thriving. Habitat has closed, they say due to a severe sales slump. It’s interesting that its demise came some months after Ikea opened for business in Belfast. Ikea offers the same type of furniture as Habitat, the same Scandi-sleek design for half the price. And whether you are on a budget or not, why pay twice the price for similar goods?

Perhaps some of us hide our routines because, shamefully, the bargains we are getting come with a hefty price tag, for someone, somewhere in our global village, usually someone who can afford it least. Because it’s shamefully daft to ship in tonnes of water from Lower Saxony to the wettest island in Europe. Or because some small specialist shop may close in the wake of a Lidl or Aldi special.

Unless we’ve been living for the last decade with our heads stuck firmly in a bargain bucket of sand, we know, or ought to know by now, of the ripple effects of our shopping habits. Or perhaps it’s déclassé and it really is just because we don’t want to be seen to be slumming it.