I'm American and I find Lidl to be absolutely ghetto; Aldi only marginally less so; but neither of them as scary as Netto! A lot of my friends shop at these places, because they're really cheap, and if you don't actually care who gets your money (or you can't afford to care) it's sorta like why not?

In their favor I will say that there is less choice of products than in, say, a Spar or Rewe (mid-market grocery chains) and thus shopping, especially for a family, can be both cheaper and more efficient. At least in Berlin there's also Edeka everywhere, which is sort of cheap-ish but not so soul-crushing.

I guess I'm pretty far off topic already, but I will add that I find it weird that there's no equivalent of Whole Foods in Germany. You have some chains of "Bioladen" like LPG (yuck) or BioCompany (pretty good IMO) -- but nobody's got that magic Whole Paycheck mix of yummy food, organic and also gourmet stuff, and that sort of vaguely aspirational shopping experience while also having a big fat parking lot.

Or maybe this exists in Munich?

Most americans are shopping at a grocery outlet, walmart, foodmaxx or a 7-11 equivalent buying hotdog meat and white bread, which is way worse than any Lidl. The furnishing might not be as fancy at Lidl compared to safeway, but what they sell is fairly decent quality.

How do German grocery stores compare to Italy?

I haven't been to Germany (outside Frankfurt airport), but on my Italian vacation last year, just going to a convenience store and picking up some bread, cheese, and fruit was cheap but WholeFoods-like quality or better. Same with their supermarkets, with regional products featured with government regulations controlling what can be labelled that way:

https://www.thechefandthedish.com/single-post/2016/10/25/Wha...

Anything equivalent in Germany?

The point of Whole Foods (at least for those I know) isn't quality of produce. You can get similar quality produce by spending more at most other supermarkets. The point is the diversity of specialty items which I haven't really found an equivalent for in any chain store in Europe so far. I don't think that model would succeed in many European countries that are slower to adopt novel and/or imported food trends.

That's why you have several stores close to each other which can all stay in business. You start at Aldi and get the basics, go to Rewe for fancier things, stop by dm or Rossmann for the most fantastic selection of toiletries and hit the bakery on the way back. Or if you live in the city it's easy to take turns every few days instead of doing it all at once.

addendum: I really like the efficiency of Aldi/Lidl with respect to filling shelves. Why does someone have to touch all the pasta packages and arrange them when it's almost the same work for the customers to grab them right out of the box?

That's not why a lot of times you can find Aldi, Lidl, Rewe, etc stores together. It's a combination of zoning regulations and Hotelling's Law.

I feel that where all Aldi’s are relatively comparable, for Edeka it seems to depend a lot on the shop. Where I live there are two Edekas within a 3min drive, one is a bit more fancy than the average Aldi, however the other one has 50 different types of quinoa and people that make you sushi on demand. It is a totally different shopping experience.

I recall that my local Edeka, before Edeka got so big, gave a lot of room to the local managers, who were ex-rocker types who were really good at employing local young dudes who probably weren't all that employable elsewhere (and who did a fine job as it turned out).

Enough that I kind of assumed it was a franchise rather than just a chain, until they started buying up all the Kaisers.

So maybe that's part of their strategy, to give the managers more responsibility to differentiate their stores instead of making them all the same?

If so I wonder how they incentivize that.

Look, I like I lot of things about Germany, but the supermarkets here are a joke. There's more product variety in a single Whole Foods in America than there is in the entire combined inventory of all German supermarkets.

Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.

>Look, I like I lot of things about Germany, but the supermarkets here are a joke. There's more product variety in a single Whole Foods in America than there is in the entire combined inventory of all German supermarkets.

You've got to be kidding. German supermarkets are just small, because they don't have the cheap real-estate that suburban stores in the USA have, but the food is far higher-quality than in mainstream US stores. Comparing to Whole Foods is just idiotic; that's like comparing German cars to American cars and picking whatever passes for an economy car in Germany, and comparing that to the Tesla model S. Only a very, very tiny percentage of the American public shops at Whole Foods, or can even afford it. Most places don't even have them available.

>Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.

Compared to what? Not stuff in American supermarkets.

The Aldi in the Americas (midwest) are not even remotely similar in quality to the Aldi's of Europe.

Walmart supercenters have much higher quality - every larger town has mainstream and cheap grocers substantially better than Aldi in every respect.

To me, Aldi for food is like Goodwill for clothes. I understand that some people hit hard times and have no other options, but my perception is that if you shop there it probably means that you are in serious financial trouble.

I personally don't like discounters (including Aldi), but a lot of people that are not in financial trouble go shopping there. Sometimes even well-off people. Germans can be very frugal, and this is especially true when it comes to food (although there are signs that this is starting to change).

It is fine to be frugal or go discount shopping - it is the quality of food at the American Aldi that felt me to like a really bad deal.

The chicken thighs say cost fifty cents (not sure of the price but utterly cheap), but once you cook it was almost inedible, a mixture of fat and big thick bones - felt like not even fit for human consumption.

Again European Aldi's are not like that.

That's because European Aldi's gets their chicken from Europe, while American Aldi's gets their chicken from America. They don't ship chicken across the Atlantic.

The root issue isn't Aldi's, it's the quality of food on the different continents. Food standards are much higher in Europe, so any grocery store is going to have generally better food than stores in America, unless you only shop at high-end places like Whole Foods and make sure to only buy good food there.

I don't follow. My point all along was that you can get much better quality (american) chicken at Walmart than at Aldi.

The only comparison to European Aldi's is to point out that in the US the food quality at Aldi is substantially worse than that of another typical local grocer, whereas in Europe it probably isn't

As a vegetarian, I can't really comment much on meat quality, but there were a number of scandals in Germany w.r.t. to meat (google "Pferdefleischskandal" if you know German). Again, though, this doesn't reflect on the wealth of Germans as much as on the relative importance of good food (especially compared to e.g. French or Italian people). I don't know if it's a result of my generation's parents or grandparents growing up in the aftermath of WW2, but "cheap food = good food" is an equation that many Germans would agree to (and which I personally find quite strange). I see a lot of people that always buy the cheapest food, but then they have an iPhone, a fancy car, a house, etc.

This is not to say that there isn't poverty in Germany. There definitely are a lot of people who are just getting by, especially after the Hartz reforms, although the social security net in Germany is still quite good. But it's not like nobody is well off.

> Most processed foods (ready meals, frozen pizzas, etc) are also extremely low quality.

Funny because processed/frozen food in the US, even from a expensive store like WF look and taste so disgusting to a french person (ever been to a Picard ?) that I've stopped eating any of them (which is great for my health I guess)

Aldi, Lidl, Netto, etc aren't supermarkets. They are discounters.

Go to a real supermarket like Kaufland or Globus.

On the other hand you can buy good bread and a lot of other basic foods pretty cheap and in high quality. When I look at American stores there is an enormous variety of cheap crap and then some decent quality expensive items.

Aldi and LIDL (or any other chain with the same working-three-employees-to-the-bone and having and narrow set of products) are pretty ghetto compared to other EU supermarket chains with larger footprints and higher prices. Though there are things in Aldi I like (at least in my own country, I know there are two different Aldi structures going around).

And Germans definitely have a reputation for being cheap and careless with their appearance that's not quite just a cliché.