After living in Germany for 4 years and having German fridge and freezer for 3 of those years, I feel like my grocery shopping habits have changed and sometimes I have to wonder what would happen if we were to move back to the States. Because German fridges and freezers are pretty small it was pretty necessary to go to the store at least once a week and often times more than once because one week worth of food for 5 people wouldn't fit. Moreover, the freezer would not fit more than a box of pizza, fish sticks and 1 container of ice cream - freezing meats/chickens/... was not an option. About a year ago we upgraded our kitchen and bought a new fridge and it comes with water and ice! Did I mention that nobody in Germany uses ice except my husband but he was and is super happy?!?
Anyway, there are 4 stores in our town - they are all pretty much next to each other. One is a bio Whole Foods type of market (Tegut), we have two discount stores (Lidl and Aldi), and one regular supermarket which is a lot of smaller than regular American supermarket (Rewe). I usually shop at Lidl and Rewe without any reason to be honest other than convenience of pulling in and out of their parking lots. I do buy wine at Aldi - can't beat around 3 Euros per bottle (or sometimes even less). Here is the thing though -
- the stores do not have that much of a selection of anything - there is chicken, ground meat (no ground chicken or turkey), and some steaks. Yesterday I went to the store wanting to buy some drumsticks to make for dinner and they didn't have them, they only had thighs and drumsticks. Same applies to most other products - there are 3 (or so) types of barbecue sauce, 3 types of ketchup ... you get the idea.
- German foods do not have dyes in them and all the allergens are highlighted in black which makes things a little bit easier when you have a child with allergies
- the stores do not have deep discounts where it makes sense to stock up on anything other than for your own convenience.
- coupons do not work the same way - you can't print them online, then wait for the right sale, etc. Coupons are loaded onto the card, they are used once and they are gone. I honestly love that system because the same card works in several different stores and besides coupons, it also accumulates points for every purchase you make which you can then turn into cash.
- another thing that took us some time to figure out was Pfand. Pfand is the deposit you pay on nearly every single plastic bottle you buy and when you return that bottle to the store, you get your money back. Every single person who shops on the economy I know does that. Here is the reason why:
Chris like his mineral gas water so we buy a lot of it so we paid 13,68€ for water and additional 18 that we will get back when we return the bottles. Similar for apples juice - we paid 7,99€ for juice and additional 2,40 for bottles.
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