Supermarket comparisons - UK vs. Germany

I much prefer supermarkets in Germany to Tesco, Sainsbury etc. and find them far better value, with friendlier staff also.

Crosslink by admin: Munich Supermarkets (miniMal)

I prefer the UK supermarkets also. You go in, get everything you need in ONE store, and shopping is finished. And you can do all this at 2am if you REALLY REALLY WANT !

You wanna compare the price of veggies in Tescos compared to your local greengrocer or street market!

A very few places have 24 hours opening in Britain, fair enough.
Shopping 6 days a week till 8pm is more than enough for me thanks.

At 2AM I'd rather be in a pub, club or in bed than buying groceries and Sundays doing something other with my free time than the British / USA obcession with driving to an out of town shopping mall. *PUKE*

Assuming you've got a car, it's generally a bit easier to shop in the UK. The veggies also look a bit nicer (esp. if you are comparing with Tengelmann).
I don't really agree, though, that the ready-to-eat processed food is just as tasty / healthy as making it yourself. You don't know what's in it half the time.

customer service here is appalling and the quality of fresh produce leaves a lot to be desired.

I must say I thought the same as I lived my 2 years in the UK. The wine is amongst the most expensive and usually has one and the same taste, if it didnt go vinegar by wrong handling. Veggies and Salates are OK, but I dont want to know how they where farmed and still way to expensive.

About Service ? To be honest, I never really need more then to "where is this or that" and that worked out nicely in the UK as it does here. Last time I had housewarming party here in munich and had not enough glasses, quickly went to the HL around the corner and she gave me a handfull for free, because it where the last ones from somewhere out of a corner. Something for free in UK ? no way. only thing you get there for free is trouble.

24h shopping? If I should really need anything badly on the times where grocerie stores are closed, I go to the gas station shop. More then that I usually suffer more with the people that have to work for low pay in the night.

What I recognized when I first moved from my home area in palatinate to munich, you can get some bad stuff sold here, that they would not dare to sell there. Because the customers wouldnt come back. It seems to be, that there´s more demand for certain stuff and its wide spread that around the corner stores have not the freshiest almost whereever you go in and around munich.

and I never had the idea to see something there, that I wouldnt get here. I actually think theres a bigger variaty in drinks, hardware and food here then in the UK.

my 5 €c

who said customer service was great here? thats a laugh. where?

there must have been about 400 bananas in tengelmann today and you wouldnt want to put one of them on your pieces.

crazy. and i love banana sandwiches too.



and this habbit of not waiting until the person in front has cleared there stuff out the way is a joke.. how many times does your stuff get mixed up with the person in front:quite a lot if you have the idiot that works in my local T.

Tengelmann is rubbish, though, Schotte - go to Penny or Aldi.
Or better yet, go to a nice Kurdish or Turkish place, or Greek place, get some decent fruit and veg.
I know we're supposed to talk about supermarkets on this thread, sorry...

I miss English Supermarkets! Especially Sunday shopping!

Well the Turkish places are small supermarkets really. And they are imho definitely best for fresh fruit and veg.

My local Spar supermarket is great. So neh.

I prefer the quality of the fresh fruit and veg in German supermarkets, the prices are also lower usually. However, I also prefer supermarkets in the UK where you can buy everything under one roof, with more convenient opening hours. So I am 50/50. One thing I always notice when I go back is how much junk food is on sale in Britain - ready meals, the sweet/chocolate aisle is huge, loads of fizzy drinks, zillions of biscuits and cakes. Of course I miss my junk food, but maybe my body doesn't Actually a final thought tipped me 65 to UK, 35 to DE, because of the availability of international foods and spices, I miss that here being able to buy it under 1 roof.

silly question. UK beats DE hands down. choice, availability, service and accessability. germany is still in the stone age when it comes to any of those factors and they are just not dynamic - apart from AEZ. oh and silly fact of the day. if tescos was a country it would economicly rank 72nd! (or thereabouts)

I liked the UK supermarkets SO much better than here. They have more variety and more products in general. They have everything in ONE store, no running around to all the little different supermarkets. Open on Sundays!!! The people were friendlier. And coming from an expert, the wine selection is soooooo much better than here. Sure cheap wine is cheap wine but at least you can find a lot more of the mid-priced and expensive wines. The only thing I like better about the stores here is that you can easily stop by on your way home from work, but I'll give that up for a big store that has everything.

Of course they aren't as big as in the US but I also like that too. They are just the right size.

To answer the original question: there is no comparison.
I even ENJOY going to the supermarket in the UK

Sorry, sometimes I have classes from early morning till late evening for several days in a row and hate the quick dash between for cat food etc. I have to work like that because the Germans have so many public holidays etc. plus other reasons not to work like Oktoberfest, Fasching whatever, that I have to grab their money while I can. Thank goodness for all my hard-working foreign students, without whom I would have long since left the country. Freelancers or especial ly those with their own businesses need longer shopping hours - unless, of course, you are running a supermarket ...

Although the produce may look much better in the UK, I'm not sure it is actually better quality. A lot of it may just contain more nasty preservative chemicals. And while UK supermarkets may be open on Sundays, it is only for 6 hours. Bring on the widespread 24 hour, 7 day shopping in NZ (Auckland, anyway)... But that would be another thread

Dude, we have 24 hr supermarkets in the UK too! How's about that

easy solution if its possible in your case, get a card for the METRO cash and carry. They are open to 10 at night on weekdays. They sell everything from Toothpaste to fresh milk to Irish Cheddar cheese. Probably also industrial quantities of dog/ rabbit food too!
You just need to own a company/ restaurant or whatever that would entitle you to one. As the website itself says, you are eligible to shop there if you are ...ein Gewerbe, sind selbstständig oder freiberuflich tätig. The Metro Cash and Carry Website has the details.

I haven't lived in London for over a year now, but when I was there, the 24 hour supermarkets closed at midnight on Saturday, opened for 6 hours of their choosing on Sunday (normally 11 to 5) and then opened again early on Monday. Has this changed then?

I think the biggest difference has to be the store layout, decor and general ambiance. The UK is well ahead in that respect.

When I used to go to V-markt (Balanstr) and Tenglemann (Neuhausen/Nymph) and I ended up rushing to get the hell out of there. Its just such an unpleasant experience to go food shopping here.

Combine that with the long queues and the narrow aisles, there really is no comparison.

Having said that, has anyone tried any of the Biomarkts? I've got a Vollcorner round the, er, ecke and its great. Unfortunately, prices to match, too.

Spar is the best mainstream german supermarket IMHO.

Give me Waitrose any day and I'll stay there eating nibbles, cheese and drinking fine wine for an hour at least...

Good lord, how many times have we had this discussion?

not often enough yet, Showem, clearly

I'm just waiting for it to turn into the usual capitalism vs. communism thread!

@Topsy and Showem: as long as NEW people are still welcome on this board, then such topics will keep repeating themselves. They see today, as newbies to Germany, what we saw when we arrived. Let them have their discussion.

Another way to end the discussion is for German supermarkets to get better and British ones to get cheaper.

Owain, good point. I hadn't really looked at the names involved, just the opinions.

I think I'll do me a little comparison while in the UK over Easter. See what's cheaper, what's not. What has more selection, what has less. Could be interesting to get some hard facts rather than only opinion.

i was hoping if we kept talking about it the german government and supermarket bosses would read it and realise how stupid they have been and change things for us.

wow whats that flying pig doing outside my window...

I wasn't trying to stop anybody having a discussion.
In fact I'd joined in the discussion already.
Can't really see why you interpreted my post that way, I hope nobody else did.

NicNZ: even out in the sticks the larger supermarkets are open 24/7 with the sole exception of Christmas Day. Agree with you that the quality is not necessarily better.
But the selection is much wider (basically because the places are bigger) and the atmosphere simply different.

Maybe I am less demanding or maybe its because I don't have kids, but I find German supermarkets are okay. REAL has just about everything I want and the fruit and veg is good enough to last a while. I never buy veg from PENNY unless I want to use it that very night.

The extreme difference is the till service. Whereas in Germany the till woman shoots stuff down the conveyer belt like a human gattling gun, UK supermarket staff all appear to be Over dosing on sedatives or walking on a floor covered with bostick.

US supermarkets kill me. There is simply to much choice for a person like me who is "decision challanged."

Yeah or if you're like me you don't decide but go for the whole shabang and come out with enough stuff for a year.

UK places are about the right size for me. There are places similar here. HIT for instance.

Saw this woman on TV when I was back home over easter. Had forgotten about her until I stumbled across the book on amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/sto...ooks/0007158041

Review snippet from Amazon:
An elegant demolition of the supermarket miracle, this book charts the impact that supermarkets have had on every aspect of our lives and culture. Did you know! / Almost 50 per cent of supermarket fruit and vegetables contain pesticide residues? / UK supermarkets make 40p on every AGBP1 spent on bananas while plantations workers are paid just 1p? / Supermarkets instill a climate of fear amongst their suppliers? / Every time a supermarket opens the local community loses on average 276 jobs? In the 1970s, British supermarkets had only 10 per cent of the UK's grocery spend. Now they swallow up 80 per cent...

Poor selection in German supermarkets? But what about the 3 aisles dedicated to tinned fucking gherkings? Now that's what I call a selection!

Don't forget the Asparagus! White, or ummm white, or even white.

I just wish they would stock painkillers, vitamins, bandaids and the like. Now I have to make a special trip to the apotheke, and in my very bad german try to specify what I need exactly... And then there´s the albino asparagus, and killer trolley-things manned by robots rumbling along the aisles.

Killer trolley things manned by robots? What, you have Daleks in your local grocery store?? Cool! If slightly dangerous.

But seriously, most biggish grocery stores have bandaids and vitamins in them. Not necessarily a huge selection, but multi-vitamins, calcium, etc that you put into water.

What's the infatuation with supermarkets anyway? In the 5 years I've been living here I've sought out local shops to buy my stuff and the distance between them all is less than I had to walk in the Safeways in Basingstoke.

The owners are friendly, care about what I want (after all it's their livelihood), the food is good, there's a wide choice, and the quality is fantastic. In the UK the supermarkets have destroyed these small traders but here you have a choice - try it out. Granted it can be a bit daunting if you don't speak German, and if a shop assistant is unhelpful simply don't go there again. They are usually superior in every way to any supermarket I have ever visited in the US or the UK.

And about the topic of food going off more quickly - I strongly suspect that the industrially processed 'fresh food' you get in Tesco is pumped with nasty chemicals to make it stay pretty longer, and hence make their lives easier. It probably isn't healthy...

PP

Actually, there is some truth in what PiePiper says there.
I just tend to go to the supermarket for everything because it's what I got used to doing for years in the UK. I never think of going to the little shops...
Mmmm. Food for thought, actually.

supermarkets = cheaper. while a lot of stuff is better in the corner stores, at the end of the day your tins of beans and that are twice the price. end of story for most people.

Yeah, but veggies and meat and stuff - you might pay less for your veggies in Tengelmann than in the corner shop, but if they've gone off already by the time (e.g.) Sunday comes around, then you might as well have paid a bit extra.
Agree about the tins of beans, though

i only go to the supermarket when necessary. love our turkish shop here, the butcher, the shops at elisabethmarkt and at least 3 italian feinkosts in our neighborhood that i love to frequent. better array of goods, and friendlier service.

AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. This is my top ranting subject about Germany. I don't cook - it bores me. Her indoors is also no Delia Smith so the UK was great 'cos you could get "semi-prepared" and interesting international foods. I don't mean packet/dried/frozen crap - I mean perhaps a fresh chicken breast pre-filled with something yummy and ready to bake.

We have ALL the well-known German supermarkets close-by here but its all rubbish compared to even a basic UK supermarket. As it happens I eat pretty much anything, just can't be arsed to actually cook so eat more junk here.

I used to enjoy food shopping in the UK but it actually depresses me over here. It bugs me 'cos most everything else is pretty cool over here compared to the UK.

go to the International Apotheken there's loads of them in the city center..(or learn German maybe...)

when I was in the UK a couple of weeks ago my sister and I decided to make banoffee pie at around 5pm on a sunday. there's a 24hr supermarket in our small town, but they were closed (8-2 on a sunday), so we drove to the next big town where all the supposed 24hr supermarkets were closed too... It's a legal thing as far as I know - supermarkets aren't allowed to be open 24hrs on a sunday..

I used to by the cheap hamburger from Plus but it was so full of grease and fat I hated cooking with it. Since then I've started buying it from the local Metzgerei, they mince it right in from of you, you see what goes in. It is much more expensive but the quality makes it worthwhile.

At first I didn't like German supermarkets at all, couldn't find anything I wanted even though I understand the language! Then I realised it was the untidy shop! Can't stand Lidl, Aldi or Pennymarkt. Tenglemanns is OK but agree with what someone else said, when I bought veg there, it went off very quickly! However, where I live there is a Mini Mal and i find this a really great supermarket, has everything i want and is welll laid out, don't ever go anywhere else!

I prefer the German system where everything closes for Sundays and Public Holidays, just like the good old days in England - it's so peaceful! Long may it last

Now, this is an intersting and very entertaining chat about German vs. UK supermarkets. Here, then, some views of a German who has been living in the UK for many years to add that variant to the discussion. And some longer views they are too. I apologise for that.

I accept all the points made by our fellow Brits and Americans that the friendliness and service quality of supermarkets (or better: retail) staff in Germany leaves much to be desired compared to the UK and the US. However, anything else about variety, fresh looking vegs etc. I could not disagree with more. That disagreement is probably mainly due to a culture difference between the dominance of convenience (in the UK, possibly in the US too, although I am less familiar with it) and the dominance of quality or tradition (in Germany).

In the UK, consumers are keen on one-stop shopping where they can get everything in one location, even if they have to drive 5 or 10 miles to a greenfield superstore where they can do that. In Germany, people are (still) used to go shopping in the town centre (not necessarily by car) for their food. And they go to individual separate stores to get all their fresh produce:bread from the bakery, meat from the butcher, veggies from the greengrocer. This is the major difference, but not only to Germany but to most Continental European countries, for things are done the same way in France, Spain, Italy, Austria etc.

Each of these shops employs people who are specialised and trained in working in that type of trade. To call yourself a butcher requires a 3 year training before you get the certificate. You then need another 6 months training course plus many years of work experience before you are allowed to actually set up your own butchery (a "Meister"). The same applies to any of the other trades. This system ensures a high level of quality of that produce. To the supermarket you go for the remainder (which German would buy bread in a supermarket?), or if you are in a hurry and can't bother going to other shops. If that is the case , though, you know that the quality will be inferior to what you can get next door from the fresh food shop.

In the UK, town centre food shops have largely disappeared, and so have the types of jobs that provided the employees to those shops (ever known a baker in the UK? when have you last been to a butcher's in the UK?). They are replaced by supermarkets that employ staff that are not specialised in food, but in retail selling. The food is delivered prepacked and the quality assurance is shifted backward from the guy you buy the stuff from (the butcher, baker etc.) to the food supplier of the supermarket. Except, there is not just one food supplier but a long chain of suppliers and processors before a product ends up in the supermarket.

There is then no freshness and no control over what chemicals (flavourings, preservatives, acids) are contained in that food. Sure, supermarket veggies in the Uk look fantastic and do last for a long time, but as one of the other contributors already remarked, at what price? Have you ever gone to a market in the Meditarranean to buy veggies there? Have you noticed the smell of lovely fresh veggies that lingers in the air? None of that in the Uk, because all the veggies are not yet ripe (and therefore look impecable), are artifically conserved and have hardly any taste.

Of course, freshly bought veggies go off after two or three days. That is what veggies do (although granted, those available in many Germany supermarkets have already gone off while in the supermarket. But then again, you do not buy veggies from the supermarket), and should not be held against them or the shops.

I attribute much of the food allergy or "food sensitivity" problems in the UK (from which half of the population seems to suffer) to the abundant usage of such chemicals and the fact that most consumers in the UK actually do no longer know how fresh non-treated food tastes. For 85% of food is now bought in supermarkets, where hardly anything is really fresh and ripe. And many people (under the age of 25 say) have never known anything else.

Needless to say which of the two systems I prefer. Given that the low quality food in the UK is still 30-50% more expensive than in Germany (or anywhere else in Europe) and that food suppliers (farmers) are squeezed out by the accumulated buying power of the five largest chains (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Morrisons), the profits that these supermarkets make must be huge. In fact, TESCO reported a 2billion (2 Milliarden) Pounds profit in the last financial year. For what? What is the value they add to the product? Well, there is none, no special engineering skills required, no special finacial knowledge required. It is just buying a product and providing the space to sell it again.

And all that at the expense of reasonable living costs and a good quality of food.

Anyone thoughts on that?

TheForeigner

Oh where shall I start?
Incorrect. The Hypermarché and Supermercado are fully in force. People will still buy specialist items from specialists but not all of their shopping. Many on this thread have already lived in those countries and will dispute your assumption there. Myself included.

A "Bäckereifachangestellter"? Why does someone need 3 years training to work in a bakery where they then use the same ungloved hand to touch food and money? Great training then. UK supermarket butchers which have a dedicated fresh butchery department generally employ City of Guilds trained staff. All staff dealing with food have to go through Government-backed health and safety training. So not as MacJob as you imply.
On Sunday actually. As for German bakers, there is a world of difference between a Hofpfisterei and a Müller-Brot you know, but both have staff with the same qualifications.

That very often isn't the case in Germany either. Produce isn't stored correctly and is also geared towards non-working mothers who may shop daily. Lifestyles have changed, why should not store embrace that change?
As for
So let me get this straight, it is not the store's fault that the food that they sell is bad? Well, whose fault is it then? If I don't do my job well, I can expect some problems in return. Why not storekeepers?

No it is an excuse for food avoidance and a product of the "no blame" culture - "it's not my fault I'm bloated, it's wheat".

Good. I've just sold some Tesco shares for my mother, she'll be pleased to hear that. You could say the same about any retail chain though. And in terms of marketing, or logics, of market research, of range planning, of civic planning, of economic strategy, of food technology... oh yeah, not much at all.
Which leads me to believe that you are anti-free market than pro-consumer choice.
Why not encourage seasonal produce fitted to today's lifestyles?
UK supermarkets are not perfect and German ones aren't either.

If a supermarket here is incapable of selling produce of an acceptable quality it should not even try.


You are kidding me right? Germany has more hypochondriacs than any country in the world. I know a few kids with lactose intolerance problems etc in the UK - but you have these here as well.

Tescos profits for doing nothing?? What about these boys:

"Karl and Theo Albrecht, founders of Aldi, are worth £13.3bn which puts them in ninth equal place in the world's richest top 10."

I am in the UK on Thursday with my digital camera. Round the corner from me here in Germany I have several major supermarkets such as Netto, Aldi, Lidl, and others that I forget the names.

For example:

My local brand new supermarket here in Germany has a fish counter that is about the size of my office desk, often empty, and sometimes with some smelly rollmops or something.

Back in the UK I can stroll into a supermarket and buy fish from around the world probably including fresh crab, red snapper, shark, tiger prawns, swordfish etc.

The fact that here in Southern Germany we are not near the sea is irrelevant - the fish in the UK comes from around the world.

It's all about THE VARIETY. There is no choice here. You cannot buy food from around the world. In the UK we also have BIO food - you can purchase BIO vegetables if you want (not all the German stuff is of course BIO anyway, so no good getting all high and mighty about it).

I enjoy eating Japanese, Italian, Indian, Chinese, French food so it is not that I am "insular" in my tastes. It is the German pallet that is "insular".

I think you need to comapre like and like.

People are tending to comapre small iner city stores in Munich that in the UK would be "corner shops" with the bigger supermarkets in the UK.

I'm far too common to join the TT yuppies at MiniMal but from what I hear they compare well to the UK.

In a way, so what if a piece of fruit is "on the turn", no one is forcing you to buy it.