Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
An absolute basket case
THOSE who shop at the Lidl supermarkets nearby will have experienced their recent total makeover.
These are the two stores about 300m from each other at Seven Sisters (SS) and Stroud Green (SG) Roads. Practically all their product lines have been shuffled around and about.
In the bigger SG store, the only kind of basket now available to shoppers is a large cart on wheels that one tows around. Obviously intended to encourage punters to spend more by filling it up.
The route to the checkouts is now tucked away and is hidden behind a huge Wall-of-Booze. The new layout appears intended to keep people in the shelving area for as long as possible. Once in the cramped SG scanning zone, frustration continues:
- There's a notice about placing Your basket (ie. Lidl's Trailer) on a narrow platform; as some shoppers bring their own bags this may initially confuse
- The sign indicates that their unwieldy contraptions need to be lifted up onto the only-just-wide-enough platform alongside the scanner
- Good luck if you are not strong and your trailer is heavy!
- Once having paid, in order to open the SG exit-barrier, you then need to scan your receipt (it operates like an Underground ticket barrier)
- Finally, SG have done away with their previous, useful packing-shelf
Not all of their changes have been thought-through, or are customer-friendly.
Although altered, Lidl's new checkouts are still better than the execrable checkouts at SatansBusy, which in the last few months, has also had a makeover (wisely, Satansbusy ditched their posters shouting GREAT PRICES on either side of the middle aisle. Unwittingly, the massed ranks of posters were more truthful than intended).
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Lidl's smaller SS store has also had a makeover, but at least they retain the handy-sized hand-baskets.
This week, I pleaded with the (helpful) SS manager not to do away with their sensible baskets. He said that they were told not to hold more than 20.
The art of the deal: I suggested that, if he would keep regular baskets available, then I would switch my "business" to his branch.
We fist-bumped and it was a Deal, a trade deal concluded at better than Trump speed!
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PsuperMarket Psychology—Lidl and Aldi have been undermining the business model linked below, but here is the past (supposed) slight embarrassment of buying supermarkets' own premium brand and the utter shame and humiliation of buying budget economy value-lines.
Excellent analysis by a possible Trump-refugee:
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Tags for Forum Posts: Aldi, Girl Gone London, Lidl
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton
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On the face of it Clive, these stores might appear to be unintentionally delivering a slap across the face for shoppers who have a disability; are elderly ; or who visit the store while having to care for relatives or young children.
Time for some public shaming?
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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ALAN: yes.
It seems the Lidl makeover has unconsciously been intended for the middle-aged, or able-bodied of average height. Too bad if you fall outside that group.
Lidl's makeover may have been applied—or is in the process of being applied—to the chain's nearly 1,000 stores in the UK.
Their massive makeover would have cost a fortune and have been planned for months, if not years. A pity they got some of it wrong.
Who might be responsible for the new store "design" ?
Was a management consultancy involved?
My theory is that able-bodied young MBA graduates, keen to make a mark, may be linked or are responsible.
MBA graduates have in some quarters have acquired a reputation for short-term goosing company profitability … but too often at the expense of the medium- or longer term corporate success.
This is achieved in many ways, sometimes by delaying payments to creditors (long-time suppliers). e.g. Hanson Trust.
Or in this case, by sweating an asset (the extant square footage): obliging customers to drag trailers around a store, sometimes inconveniencing other shoppers; cramped check-outs; narrower aisles allowing more shelving carrying more lines. Thus increasing the sales per square foot. In the short term.
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Clive, maybe it's wiser to park any theories about WHO is to blame for the redesign of the Lidl stores? Surely, names of the designers, or their paper qualifications are no more important than their shoe sizes or favourite football team. The main issues are still the impact on customers.
I'm fairly sure as well that young MBA graduates don't gather to loudly chant their annoying business mantras in local parks.
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Permalink Reply by Tamara Romanyk
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I noticed the lack of smaller baskets in the Lidl on Tottenham Court Rd yesterday, so it's obviously a new general policy. I wonder if this has been introduced in order to make shoplifting more difficult, as it's not as easy to make a dash out the door with one of those 'trailers' as with a smaller basket. Such a pain though, as you have to hoik the thing up onto the shelf next to the scanner.
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TAMARA, I reckon the scanning of receipts to open the exit barrier at the SG road branch may have been introduced to make shoplifting more difficult. Not that Lidl's lightweight paddle would be much of an obstacle to a determined thief.
However I have never seen—nor would expect—a shoplifter to use a (swinging) hand basket to dash out, loaded with stolen goods.
I have witnessed a thief in local Sainsbury's stow an item in an inside jacket pocket; a thief dash out of Apple Regent Street with an item and a thief in SS Lidl's dash out with an item (a power tool).
All the examples of theft I witnessed were individual items.
I'm sure shoplifting is a big problem for retailers, but they've installed a lot of measures already, including guards and multiple CCTV cameras. I expect that combatting "shrinkage" was a small aspect of Lid's overall makeover.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris
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It is surprising and interesting to hear that the supposedly clever Lidl lot are messing things up. If their aim is to grow their profits, their basket policy is entirely misplaced so far as this elderly potential customer is concerned. Since starting, during the pandemic lock-downs, to use home deliveries (from Sainsburys) I rarely set foot in the actual shop. Moreover, on the few occasions that I have been inside, it took far longer to find anything because of substantial changes in the layout of products and aisles since 2020. No longer could I see, at the far end of an aisle full of sugary breakfast delights, a small sign announcing "adult cereals". These were presumably only for consenting adults in private but they included everything we might need, eg conflakes, puffed wheat, wheatabix, grapenuts, shreddies, allbran and unsweetened muesli. Sadly, they covered only a tiny fraction of the shelf space. No prizes for guessing what the rest of the fare was.
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… their basket policy is entirely misplaced so far as this elderly potential customer is concerned.
Yes, and misplaced for other "demographics" too!
Lidl's big-trailer enforcement policy seems aimed squarely at the slim, middle-aged and able bodied of average height … much like the fresh MBA graduates often found working in management consultancies.
Lidl's least-catered-for would appear to be disabled customers or wheelers (users of wheelchairs).
Much of the worst aspects of Lidl's massive makeover could be reversed, simply by allowing stores to carry more than a miserable 20 (twenty) hand-baskets.
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