Lidl in the 90s: the supermarket that no longer exists

Lidl in the 90s: the garage full of pallets that isn't coming back

In the late 90s, walking into a Spanish Lidl was like walking into a warehouse. Pallets in rows, cardboard boxes in the aisles, dim lighting, giant flyers printed on recycled paper and a range of products you couldn't find anywhere else. They didn't take cards: cash only. And yet many of those who knew it back then insist that supermarket was better than today's. Not prettier. Better.

The argument running through the conversation is simple: the original Lidl brought production surpluses from northern and central Europe at prices that undercut the Spanish market, without adapting to local tastes or apologising for it. Strange products, labels in German, nutritional information in a language nobody read. Today that model has dissolved into just another chain, with a coupon app, a bazaar section and Spanish products. The question is whether the customer won or the 1998 shopper lost out.

What the Lidl that no longer sells used to sell

The catalogue of the time reads like an inventory of a Spain that hadn't yet globalised its shopping basket. Pickled herring with dill in half-kilo jars — highly regarded in Germany and something nobody here had seen —, pre-cut chocolate bars for under 20 duros, German beer from the Bavaria region at 25 pesetas a bottle, chocolate and cream cups at 15 or 20 pesetas each, pizzas at 30 pesetas. Real bread, not the white, chewy bread of the conventional supermarket.

The price list discussed in the conversation has almost archaeological value. The chocolate and cream desserts bought at 15 or 20 pesetas now sell, in the same format, for 59 cents: around 100 pesetas at the old exchange rate. The German beer at 25 pesetas a bottle is the other anchor. And the powdered detergent in large boxes, then a sure seller for the chain, is now harder to find on its shelves than the own-brand products.

The range was the selling point. There were products you couldn't find anywhere else that justified the alucinación. That's the part that comes up most: the ability to surprise. A supermarket that in 1999 peine in a mid-sized city with giant flyers and brutalist typography generated a curiosity that no current marketing campaign reproduces.

The Soviet-style canteen aesthetic some people miss

The description of the store is repeated with eyewitness precision: garages with shelving, pallets, boxes in the way, little lighting in the afternoon and evening. A format compared to the old DIA stores and one that today seems unthinkable. It was broootal, one account sums up, and everything was dumped on the floor.

That shabbiness had an unexpected side effect: the feeling of shopping somewhere where price was the only thing that mattered. There was no background music, no wide aisles, no bazaar sections. There was product and there was price. The later modernisation — rolled out by area, in different waves, with a clear push after the 2008 crisis — turned those stores into presentable neighbourhood supermarkets. The result, according to several accounts, is that today you can't tell a Lidl from a Mercadona or a small Carrefour.

Some go further and argue the chain has been "Mercadona-ised": same look, same kind of range, prices that are no longer what they were. Fruit and vegetables are bought at the street market and meat and fish at the municipal market. Lidl has stopped being an anomaly and become just another option.

The bazaar, the app and the stock problem

The transformation has a visible face: the bazaar. Parkside brand tools, sportswear, eyebrow epilators, angle grinders. One shopper sums up the current experience with an image worth a whole analysis: you go in for the chicken breast, the epilator and an angle grinder. The chain that sold German chocolate now competes in the bazaar arena with local shops.

The coupon system and the Lidl Plus app draw much of the criticism. Discounts are limited to four units per customer, compared with other chains that set no cap and accumulate the savings voucher. The orange labels on products nearing their expiry date aren't always applied properly at the till. And the app coupons, according to several accounts, are largely junk: soy drinks, kitchenware, specific cleaning products. Digital penny-pinching to sustain a savings narrative.

On top of that is a phenomenon that goes beyond the chain: when there's a very good offer, it disappears fast. Some speak of shoppers who clear out stock to resell it. The customer who arrives later finds an empty shelf. The complaint about out-of-stocks in stores in Germany and Spain appears in the conversation as a sign of a broader supply problem, though nobody provides data to confirm it.

The quality that went down the drain

The other big chapter is perceived quality. Increasingly thin packaging — yoghurts you cut straight through with the spoon —, natural yoghurts that taste like water, chocolate custards with no chocolate. The criticism isn't nostalgic: it's about the product. They save on packaging and ingredients to cut the price by a few cents and be able to say they're cheaper.

Chocolate and jam are the recurring example. Strawberry jam with plenty of fruit pieces has become, according to the accounts, something synthetic. The chocolate that came from Germany or Belgium no longer tastes the same. The desserts that used to be good change their recipe for the worse every year or two, or shrink in size. It's the same complaint applied to the beer: what was a full-bodied German beer is now water.

On the other side, some argue the current chain has a wider range, Spanish products and better prices than other national chains, and that fruit and vegetables are bought elsewhere out of habit, not necessity. The debate isn't settled. What does come through clearly is that the Lidl of 1999 and today's Lidl are two different companies with the same brand.

The customer who is no longer the same

The evolution of the customer base is another layer of the issue. In the first stores, the clientele was that of the working-class neighbourhood. Over time, and according to some accounts, the chain moved its locations to areas where you needed a car to get there. The reading of that move is uncomfortable and unproven: it's suggested it responded to a change in customer profile. What is documented in the accounts is the initial stigma: some people looked down on you for shopping there, and made comments.

Today the social judgement has flipped. Lidl is a respectable option, even aspirational in its bazaar section. The paradox is that this respectability has been bought at the cost of what made it different. The supermarket that brought products that didn't exist in Spain now sells, above all, products that exist everywhere.

One question remains unanswered in the material: whether the hard-discount model was sustainable or whether modernisation was inevitable to survive. Those who miss the pallets aren't buying the easy nostalgia narrative. They're buying the feeling that something was lost along the way and that that something wasn't just the price.