Hi everyone
In the past I have gone to St Louis just outside Basel for food and also gone to Konstanz from Zurich.

Does anyone know offhand which turns out to be cheaper.

Same kind of distance in the car.

I think the food quality is better in France.

It's surely going to depend on what you buy.

Why not compare the actual products on carrefour.fr and aldi-sued.de (or shops of your preference) to find out?

I would never buy food in Germany.

Tom

Assuming you live in about the same distance from St. Louis and Konstanz, and doing some geometry, I recommend you go to Waldshut which is I guess will turn out to be quite closer to you than either of them and has a wide selection of shops for everything including food, for competitive prices.

There's that. Plus neither of them are actually cheap enough to really justify the full cost of getting there from Zürich for a normal weekly shop.

If you need clothes or such then certainly get food at the same time. But really not just food alone.

Please support your local shops, when possible. They rely on your shopping to stay in business. Thanks.

I do most of my shopping at local shops.

But there is some stuff that I can only find in Italy (fish, veg, certain meats and cheeses, etc.), 10 minutes from work, same distance as the local Denner.

Tom

So do shops in German border towns

St. Louis is a disgusting town, BUT it has some of the best food shopping in the area. You simply CANNOT find better fruits and vegetables than in Grand Frais, the overall balance between choice and quality in Le Clerc is unbeatable and for meat go to Viande Cash. Overall, well worth a trip, not only that you'll save, but more importantly, the quality is superior. I am all for local, if the variety and quality was the same, which, sadly, often it isn't

What gaburko said. I live in Germany and I drive to France to the nearest Grand Frais for fruit and veggies. The French come here for the DM market and mich cheaper staples... so it boils down to what you want to buy.

I find the standard of chicken in Switzerland is appalling and very expensive and duck is largely not available unless you buy a cheap tasteless bird from Lidl.
They must know that by having expensive selections of products that are of inferior quality to Austria, Germany, and France they are losing people across the border. As the population gets younger and more diverse here I am sure they will have to correct the prices in the long term.

How frequently you shop for food?. Driving the congested roads between Zurich and St. Louis will take a bit of your sanity every time, traffic around Basel sucks. Also, for any significant amount of meat products you need to drag people along and make them suffer the boring drive. Also, a single speed fine can erase the savings of several weeks. Finally, sometimes you find 50-60% discount on CH that brings prices down. So, consider that all the work is only profitable in a very specific set of positive circumstances.

All that said, a lot of people get a lot of value in bragging they save money by shopping on the other side of the border. If happiness and peace of mind are found believing the grass is greener, any effort is worth. Faith is a powerful thing.

I agree but... For me it's not a matter of price, but a question of quality. The food over the border in France is so, so much better. There's also a few things I simply can't find here, for example fresh milk, which I went as far as asking to Migros and Coop if they sold any in their stores and they replied that they do not for logistical reasons. So I'm sorry but I will keep crossing the border every now and then to buy better quality products. If they sold those products in Geneva I'd be willing to buy them here at a higher price.

Thats what I thought when I did my first job in Switzerland... in 2002.

That’s really weird. Fresh milk is really easy to find here, I buy it practically every day. I wonder why they don’t have it in Geneva?

I find chicken here to be much better than the chicken in France in general.
I agree about duck though, it’s not easy to find here unless it’s Christmas and I love duck.

We occasionally go across to France for shopping but not for chicken. We go for the things that aren’t easy to find here and fish mostly.

Not in my experience. I've never managed to find a decent chicken to roast in Switzerland, nor, in normal supermarkets, is there anything resembling free range. In France you can often buy Label Rouge chickens for under eu5/kg, although at our local (Châtel) Intermarché they're usually around 6.50 . Lidl/Aldi in CH is usually more like chf15, and not free range, and with little flavour.

I suspect they may have better but even more expensive ones in Manor, but I've never really looked, as it's much further away anyway and I only go there occasionally when I've run out of Ale

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Last duck I bought was 3.5 kg dressed from some guy down the road for CHF50.

My wife chose it while it was still quacking a week earlier.

Tom

Actually, are there any places in Switzerland where you can buy chickens live to slaughter at home or does this fall fowl (ha ha) of some rules on home butchery?

This must be something in Geneva, it's certainly not a Switzerland thing. In fact, the milk in Switzerland happens to make the best yogurt I've had, and trust me, I've tried the French milk, it's inferior. I buy fresh milk a few times a week and 2x a month raw milk.

Chicken is tricky, the standard ones in Coop/Migros are worthless indeed while even in Geant Casino 5 min. from my place in France I can buy fantastic, free range chicken that makes the best broth. Having said that, there are options in Switzerland (farm subscriptions for ex.) where you can get them every once in a while and they are really good. But yes, going in Coop is an absolute no-go for chicken

Agree about the yoghurt (I particularly love Coop's quark). However, if by fresh milk you refer to refrigerated milk (i.e. this: Coop), that's not fresh milk and the taste is nothing comparable to fresh milk as understood in France / UK / Australia (like this from Carrefour)