Can Aldi win the taste test?

The hard discounters suffered their first blip last month when TNS Worldpanel’s grocery data showed that food shoppers “have started to revert to pre-recession behaviour” with established grocers outpacing discount players such as Aldi.

Does this mean, then, that those ABC1 customers who flocked to the discounters when it became acceptable for them to do so will now revert back to the likes of Waitrose and Marks & Spencer?

The answer lies in the quality of the products. While the recession made many customers try the discounters, surely if the quality of products is top-notch, they then wouldn’t revert back to paying double the price for the same item? But can the discounters provide that quality?

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Aldi’s HQ in Atherstone sampling some of their products. And while I’m no Giles Coren, the experience helped me realise Aldi’s position in the market.

Aldi had lined up a selection of popular products and sat them alongside its major competitors. Some of the items I wouldn’t have stood a chance at guessing which was which – namely, chicken dippers or tomato ketchup. I don’t eat either very regularly, but I could still see the quality in Aldi’s product.

Some, however, were striking. Take the strawberry jam for instance. Just by looking at the six bowls of jam lined up in front of me, I could discount two for a start. Two of the pots looked like something that had come out of a nuclear explosion and were just humming with radiation. I later learnt they were the value lines from two of the major supermarkets.

That left me with four pots. I discounted a further two, which were a bit watery but still tasted OK.

Left with two pots, I couldn’t choose between them. Both had a rich, dark colouring, good consistency and lots of fruit. And one of those pots was from Aldi. The other was a leading brand.

The results were surprising not because I thought Aldi’s food was poor quality, but because I perhaps thought that it wouldn’t have been as good as the leading brand. I would challenge even Giles Coren to do the blindfold test.

Of some of the other samples, I chose the brand over Aldi. But not because the Aldi product wasn’t nice, it was just a slight preference in the taste.

What was interesting was the taste test between Aldi and Tesco’s Discounter products – which were launched specifically to ensure Tesco’s customers didn’t leak to Aldi.

I blind tested a bacon quiche and camembert cake. Tesco had matched Aldi exactly on price with these two products and obviously professes that the quality is the same.

Firstly, the quiche. On looks alone the Aldi product stood out and when I tasted the two, the Tesco product was more like one of its value lines than a top brand.

The camembert cake was even more stand-out. I’m not a huge fan of camembert but Aldi’s was soft and stringy with a crispy coating. The Tesco version seemed more like plastic and the coating had a strange orange glow.

While Tesco claims its Discounter lines are working, it seems like it still has a way to go before it matches on quality as well as price.

While Aldi will never replace the leading brands, on my taste test, it can give them a run for their money. And if its stores are convenient and easy to shop, I see no reason why their run of good fortune should end.