IMO, what Aldi succeeds in is doing more with less. Aldi's aisles, stores, and product ranges are smaller compared to big grocery stores. However, Aldi leverages a 'curated assortment' of products to offer good quality items at a lower price than other grocery stores. There's also 1 "Aldi Finds" aisle in the stores which seems like it's to beta test potential items or offer short-term deals on limited items (? - just my guess).
The German discount grocery chains are really taking off in the US with Aldi and Lidl. I would like Rewe to come to the US next.
If I go into my local Tesco, which isn't a huge ones, they've got about 15 types of coleslaw. The Lidl has 2. But they're nice ones. The cheapest is not awful, like the cheap Tesco one. The most expensive isn't ridiculously priced, but it is superb.
Baked beans - one type at Lidl, their own brand, but it's nicer than Heinz these days. The dishwasher tablets are half the price of the branded ones but better in my dishwasher.
I honestly love both Aldi and Lidl. They do have their gaps (you need to do ~10% of your shop in Tesco for these) but for the rest...
I was happy when they opened a lidl half way between my home and the local massive asda, I can go get the few bits I need from ASDA then hit lidl on the way back for the majority.
LIDL's meat is amazing compared to asda's and they get a lot of cheese and stuff off the continent making it excellent quality for less than ASDA sells a block of bright orange 'Red Leicester'.
Other than a couple of wobbly bicycle racks out the front of the local store, Lidl UK are entirely car-orientated, in every aspect from location of the store to making pedestrians walk through the car park without pavements. That surprised me for a European chain.
My other main gripe with Lidl is that they don't do home delivery. I'm not going to walk 25 minutes to their store, dice with cars and then haul groceries home when Tesco will bring shopping into my kitchen for £4.
I was about to post this exact sentiment. Great companies in the future will curate products, experiences, processes, providing less choice and convincing the user they don't need more.
Maybe Tchibo and German whole-foods chains will be more novel in the US (but I don't know really). Tchibo is originally a coffee company focussing on quality and price (with whole-beans-grinding at the store) but they've long expanded into selling all kinds of clothing and home/gardening stuff. They're fanatic, too - their slogan has been "every week a new world", and they'd decorate their small shops anew every week.
My sister has worked in Aldi in the UK for 15 years. She loves it.
She started as a normal member of staff - they expect people to pitch in - you're on the checkout, moving boxes, helping deliveries, etc. Nobody is immune from having to do work.
She's now an Area Manager and still pitches in when visiting a store - she doesn't walk around with a clipboard, she helps the staff to do their job.
The wages are so much better than other supermarkets in the UK, but they expect you to work for them. Our local Aldi has been closed for 5 months while they rebuild it. I miss it so much. The Tesco nearby is far more expensive and has staff just chatting. The Lidl is more austere but is more efficient and cheaper. As soon as it opens again i'll be doing 90% of my shop there.
I was running a table at a graduate fair for my company and stood opposite the Aldi grad scheme guys. The grad salary ofter 5 years (if you are accepted on the programme) was great (£75k) and they expected you to be managing multiple stores in an area. They had quite a queue of students.
I find it so weird how in the UK and much of the rest of europe, store managers and lots of blue collar jobs get paid so much more than software developers, even at large companies.
No, I live in the US. But from what I've heard about software engineer salaries in the UK, even at most large multinationals (except only Google?), it seems someone with 5 yoe as a store manager at Aldis in the UK makes (afaik) more than basically every software engineer with 5 yoe in the UK
I don't see why an area manager for Aldi stores shouldn't be getting paid a lot of money. It's not exactly an unskilled job, it just doesn't require extensive qualifications. You're managing large numbers of employees over several different stores.
Some days I feel bad about how much money I make as a software engineer. It's an easy job. All I do is sit at a computer and write some code for a few hours a day. I don't have to manage employees or stock or anything like that, I just listen to music and hammer away at a keyboard.
Maybe it’s easy for you and many HN readers, but it’s hard for the average person. There aren’t many people that understand how to program, and there are much fewer who understand how to program well.
At my tech company of around 30 people, even the most technically inclined employees don’t really understand programming. And I think my developer colleague is in the category that cannot program well. (I would optimistically say that I can.)
Well their jobs are typically "easier" for values of hours worked and overtime expectation and holidays given plus really nice things in close walking distance. the quality of life is better and the money paid equals out. Living in the US is harsh in comparison in my experience
Most of the stuff they're doing seems to be entirely commonplace for the supermarket chains we have here in Norway.
The coins for the carts.
Stacking crates instead of individual items.
Training every employee for everything (it's not uncommon to see a store manager operating the cash register).
Expecting customers to fill their own bags and charging for those bags.
Smaller selection.
The only unique part seems to be the tendency to promote the shop's own brand over name brands.
On a related note: Lidl tried and failed to get a foothold here in Norway with similar tactics. It didn't work. Perhaps because our mainstream store chains are already so similar to Lidl, except our domestic chains offer actual name brand products and the Lidl stores didn't, and I think that's why they failed. Also, people who are really desperate to save money can just go to Sweden to shop. It's not a very long drive.
It helps if you just imagine that every large brick and mortar chain in the Nordic countries operates kind of like IKEA. Lots of self service, spartan shop interior, and also, since labour is expensive here and you can't fuck your employees over with low wages like you can elsewhere, store owners tend to want to cut down on the number of staff.
The Nordic countries are not big on service, because you're a big boy and can take care of yourself. The reason IKEA came from Sweden is because that's the attitude here. Shop clerks aren't there to be your servants. They are your equals. Foreigners often complain of the awful service they get here, but it's a deliberate part of the working culture.
>Shop clerks aren't there to be your servants. They are your equals.
I love that attitude. I've always felt a bit weird in very high end establishments where the staff are overly deferential.
> Foreigners often complain of the awful service they get here
In addition to your point, I think this also has something to do with people from Nordic countries being a less likely to smile at strangers than people from smiling cultures.
One time when I was the last customer to shop before closing (yes, our stores close over night) a store employee bagged my groceries while I payed for them. It felt extremely awkward and I felt embarrassed and didn't know what to do. So I just stood there, watching as somebody else packed my stuff, smiled, said thank you, and left feeling really weird. I don't know how other people do it regularly.
Hmm.. It is not that we dont care about service. It is more about what kind of service you can get. If you go to IKEA and say ”Hey, I am a student what is the best sofa for my budget?” they will help you find something without upselling you. If they cant help you find something they will usually refer you to OTHER stores. Service is more than just being a slave to the customer.
I've actually experienced much better service at aldi/hofer and ikea than at other stores in europe. Staff are very happy to help answer questions and track down hard to find items.
There is no minimum wage, but salaries are bargained for via collective agreements. So everywhere but the smallest shops and temporary jobs you get paid a decent wage.
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Scandinavians are big on DIY and minimalism, and not big on service. This is a common complaint from foreigners who visit, but it's the working culture here. You, the customer, a a big boy and can take care of yourself.
I mean... that may be the attitude, but that doesn't make it good.
The last time I went to IKEA, their website had said they had 50+ of an item in stock, but there were 0 where it was supposed to be. I had to spend 10 minutes with an employee for them to find where the entire box had been misplaced by another employee, in another aisle.
When employees mess up (which is very common, we're all human), you can't take care of yourself. You need another employee to fix it. It has nothing to do with being a "big boy".
Based on my experience that's pretty standard for european grocery stores. No cashier in Europe is ever going to bag your groceries.
Despite bagging your own groceries being a universal experience I haven't yet seen a local properly use a self-serve checkout kiosk. Instead of scanning an item and putting it in a bag on the weighing platform they instead scan the items and put them on the weighing platform, then pay, then put the items in the cart, move the cart towards the store exit and then bag their groceries.
I just did that a few hours ago. It somehow feels like playing Frogger and Tetris at the same time, and I'm having trouble managing the multitasking. At least when the cashier does the scanning, you still have a bit of time to plan how to divide the load over the too few bags you took up front.
I tried to, but it's impossible to resist temptation to rearrange stuff in the bags on weighing platform. The machine then seizes with complaint about unexpected stuff in bagging area. So I gave up on that.
The first two times I used the self-serve kiosk the machine complained constantly about unexpected stuff, and I noticed that I had placed my bags up to the edge of the platform. Now I place them in the middle of the platform and the machine seems happy. Either that or the store adjusted the sensitivity on the machines, hope that helps.
Here in Sweden stores have started to switch to self scan without scales. Cheaper to buy, uses less space and no nuisance for the customers.
Or even better the stores that do self scan with a hand held scanner, just walk around continously bagging in your cart, put the barcode scanner in the holder when you exit and pay with NFC.
After my first experiences with the "bag-as-you-go" strategy causing the weighting platform to lose track of items I've scanned I gave up on that. Placing on the scales directly simply works more reliably.
yes, reading this article as European (that never visited the US) was a weirding experience. I lived in 4 different countries in Europe, and that's exactly how every supermarket work.
And to be fair, I thought that every supermarket in the world worked like that...
Can you imagine when the Americans will find automatic counters instead of cashiers? :)
If the automatic checkout counters even look like they have a scale I won't waste my time. Not once have I made it out without the machine requiring an override, no matter how carefully I place and scan items. Thankfully it seems the scales are becoming less common.
If I'm physically able to do it, would otherwise need to wait longer to get through a cashier line, and don't have anything else to do with my time while waiting in the cashier line it seems like it's to my benefit to use the self-checkout on principle. It saves me time and costs me virtually nothing.
Self check-out seems even more common in the US than in many European countries.
No offense, but it sounds like you need to travel more if you assume that businesses everywhere work like in a few European countries. Consider the vast differences in many Asian countries, to start.
> On a related note: Lidl tried and failed to get a foothold here in Norway with similar tactics. It didn't work. Perhaps because our mainstream store chains are already so similar to Lidl, except our domestic chains offer actual name brand products and the Lidl stores didn't, and I think that's why they failed.
I don't think that sounds like the most likely reason. I have seen Lidl's arrival to Finland. And at least with respect to prices Norway and Finland are very similar, namely exorbitantly expensive if you compare to central Europe.
Also in Finland price competition did not use to be very fierce. They are only few players and it was an unwritten agreement that business is more comfortable to do without any price wars, consumers pay...
So when Lidl came there was massive pressure on suppliers not to sell to Lidl. If you sell to Lidl (with initially some 20-30 stores) you will not sell to us any longer (with many hundreds of stores). For several years Lidl had to ship nearly every product from central Europe. Which was not only expensive, but also were the products partly exotic to the consumers. For me as German living in Finland Lidl was better than the finest specialty shop, lots of products you could not buy anywhere else and very cheap. After a couple of years the supplier boycott started to fade away, consumer acceptance grew and my specialty shop was no longer :(
Could it have been a similar story in Norway?
Finland was also hit hard by a recession from 2008 - 2017. I understand Norway was doing much better these years and salaries are high. So the demand for low price options might have not been so wide-spread, making their market entry even more difficult.
Without knowing it exactly I have an idea that Norway might be a harder nut to crack because it is outside the EU and some rules don't apply there. I seem to remember something like a butter (?) crisis over there some time ago. That could never happen in a country that has fluent trade with its neighbors.
> Without knowing it exactly I have an idea that Norway might be a harder nut to crack because it is outside the EU and some rules don't apply there.
Norway is a member of the common market, it is said to be the most integrated non-member. Aldi/Lidl seem to be successful in Australia, USA, and Switzerland so I don't think EU membership is a requirement for their business model to succeed. Without being an expert in the field, I'd say it's more important to find the right balance between the aggressive company model and some local practices you better do not attack. Some local managements seem to be better to find the right middle ground than others. As also mentioned in the article Walmart failed in Germany. But Mc Donald's or Ikea haven't, so it can't be generally impossible in Germany.
However, being a member of the EU inner market does not apply for agriculture in the case of Norway. I guess this means if you have are sourcing frozen french fries you can get them on the EU market, but potatoes you need to source locally or pay potential customs. But I am not sure how the border line between agriculture and everything else belonging to the common market is actually defined. Nor do I know how relevant customs on agriculture are.
> I seem to remember something like a butter (?) crisis over there some time ago. That could never happen in a country that has fluent trade with its neighbors.
France had a butter crisis in 2017. Your search engine will bring up many articles. But France is in the common EU agriculture market and France is in the Euro. So I don't think your argument really holds. Whether Norway had a any butter crisis is beyond my knowledge.
Wow i didn't know that Aldi was in the US. Aldi and lidl keep opening stores like crazy in Europe, there must be like 15 of them in my city in France.
They are great on price, and the high end product are actually nice. But the rest is just average, and the cheese is really low quality (for french standard i mean) . The most annoying thing is that i can never find all the things i need. I just shop there for the basics : milk, egg, water, fruits and occasionally the tools they sell.
The really good thing with aldi (more than lidl) is that they purchase local food, and you can sometimes have really nice surprises.
For awhile I lived in a city with both an Aldi and a Trader Joes. Over all I prefer Trader Joes, but Aldi had some cheap products I liked. And it was a nice surprise when I found some random household item I needed.
It's quite impressive how things have turned. Not long ago Walmart was about to disrupt the German supermarket landscape. They even tried to cut prices to below market cost to conquer Aldi, Lidl, and the other big discount supermarket chains. After a couple of years they gave up and left. Now Aldi appears to be "fighting back" successfully in the US.
The history of Aldi's efficiency [0] is pretty impressive. It actually started with two brothers nearly going broke with their small grocery store. Then they realized that if they'd reduce the diversity of goods they offer and instead sell only the most common goods in bulk, they could undercut the competition's prices. This concept was so successful that it led to a multi billion dollar business which is still dictating the prices of common groceries in Germany.
Still there are other supermarket chains that have adapted to the Aldi strategy and are actually causing growth issues for Aldi. Their concept is to offer basic goods at the same price as Aldi does, then upsell more special and higher price items while offering a better shopping experience. I guess that's what's going to happen in the US as well eventually.
On some level I rather like the idea that Aldi, after fending off Walmart on their home turf are now making successful inroads in America in an effort to take Walmart's lunch.
It's not uncommon in Germany to go to Aldi first, then buy everything that you could't get at the "full service" more expensive super market next door.
It's the only reasonable thing to do. REWE / Edeka / ... also have standard groceries (yoghurt, cheese, pasta, cans of tomatoes, corn, etc) from their discount brand which cost exactly as much as the Aldi product, but they are usually vastly inferior in taste and quality. Just go to REWE and buy a can of ja! corn. It tastes like somebody yellow-painted puffed rice.
You're giving undue credit to wallmart. It was already illegal and it's been for a long time. I can find articles on Aldi, Lidl and Wallmart paying fines for that in 2000. My German is not good enough to browse the laws.
I think the point that this article drove home to me is that a lot of Aldi's "bare bones" mentality actually leads to a better experience for most shoppers, even separate from the lower prices. For example, the comment from a customer about the store layout making it easier to get in and out with kids in tow. The Aldi store brands have a reputation for good quality without the "50 kinds of salsa" paralysis of choice. The register lines move faster because there is no bagging. Store employees are more helpful because they are cross-trained, etc.
I think this contrasts with a place like WalMart where employees are often less-than-helpful, so much of the products are low quality, etc.
The "50 kinds of salsa" paralysis is so real. Some shops have a great selection, everything looks tasty, exciting, worthwhile to buy but you can only buy so much. In Lidl, there is no problem of choice, because much less to choose from, you are relieved from having to choose. I prefer it for staples.
So, "Aldi" actually means lots of different things. Two German brothers (Karl and Theo Albrecht) formed ALDI in 1946. In the 60s, they split the company in two, resulting in Aldi Nord (Theo) and Aldi Süd (Karl). In the '90s, the brothers retired as CEOs and transferred ownership to family trusts.
The companies operate in different geographical areas. Originally, the brothers split across the Rhine, but now Aldi Süd includes North America, Australia, and half of Europe. Aldi Nord operates in the other half of Europe.
The same trust that owns Aldi Nord also owns Trader Joe's (acquired in 1979), and they use similar operational values: (minimal advertising, limited selection, private label goods, work ethic, etc)
This is mentioned in the article along with the tidbit of "the brothers [splitting] the business in two, reportedly over a dispute over whether to sell cigarettes" and the "dividing line between the two in Germany known as the “Aldi Equator.”"
Back to Aldi: it always surprises me that the two Aldi’s don’t get accused of forming a cartel. It is fairly clear that they agreed to split the market. I guess that doesn’t get them into trouble because a) there are other large players and b) they can’t be accused of doing it to prevent a price war.
AFAIK when it comes to (German) competition/cartel law, they're in some ways considered as if they were a single entity. There's a rule treating companies that openly strongly align like that as if they were commonly owned, so they can't pretend to compete with each other, presumably if one tried to buy an actual competitor the market position of both would be taken into account, ... So yes, it'd be trouble if they in sum started to dominate the market etc.
Most of those things are easy to do and easy to copy.
But how do you find private label suppliers for 1000+ products, how do you know how to define great products, how do you verify that, and do you still manage prices low ?
That's a key skill aldi acquired over decades, and it's really hard to copy.
Most grocery stores have more private label products than Aldi. It isn't hard, most produces of product will put whatever label you want one (within what is legal) if you order a quantity.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Private labels can set quality levels - for a price - if they want to. Most are trying to be cheapest and so they don't.
Private labels order from the brand names. Sometimes they order a different recipe, but often it is the exact same recipe as the name brand just the box is different. If there is still more pickles in the vat after making 1000 jars of the private label they will finish the vat into 17 jars of their brand. Sometimes a batch will not meet the brand's quality standards (taste) but it is still food safe so they dump it into a private label box with lower standards.
I used to work for the UK's largest Supermarket Chain. In 2012 when an ALDI was due to open close to a store I managed, head office sent in a delegate from the small "Continental Discounter" (ALDI/LIDL) team who explain that the ALDI brand was a cleverly worked phallacy, it wasn't cheaper, the products weren't better and customers didn't like it as much as people made out.
Six years later, the impact of ALDI and LIDL have effected fundamental change in the giant, Supermarket Chain, the whole corporate strategy seems to emulate what ALDI does well and there is a pilot where some of the smaller stores are rebranded under a different name and basically modelled on a German discounter.
ALDI and LIDL have changed the UK supermarket landscape in a fundamental way and customers seem to love it.
I live in Aldi's motherland and even if I could easily afford to buy groceries in other stores from major brands I usually go to Aldi first, buying the 10% they do not sell later somewhere else. Why? Because I blindly trust them. What they sell is usually good quality with a good taste (I even do not look at the prices). The juices they sell: perfect. The fruits they sell: mostly sweet (there is a fruit quality problem in Germany, as the country usually only gets second grade fruits because of the low prices eveywhere). Milk, joghurt, cheese: best quality. And I can actually remember where stuff is! So shopping is fast. This is in stark contrast to most other retailers who try to trick you into buying more by hiding stuff in unexpected places. Many years ago, someone told me something from behind the scene at Aldi. She was working for a producer of toilet paper and similar. She said: in contrast to other clients, we are not allowed to produce one lot without some people from Aldi being present. Before they produced for them, they had to call Aldi so they could have engineers at the factory to oversee everything that was done. She said no other customer did this.
This really reinforced my trust in their Quality.
At least in the U.S., TP is one of the few things that's differentiated--they have 3-5 different ones, each a clone of a different brand like Charmin Ultra or Quilted Northern or Angel Soft. There's a little thing in the corner of the packaging that says "Compare to Cottonelle" or whatever. I took a photo of the one we like so I know which to get next time :)
The only things I don't care for from Aldi are their canned sodas and some of their yogurts due to the sugar contents being somewhat higher than many typical name brands.
In addition to being the cheapest, I'm often impressed by the quality of some of Aldi's pantry staples. Specifically, I'm blown away by their onions. I buy a bag of onions every 1-3 weeks. Since I can't individually inspect every onion in the bag, I'm resigned to the fact that anywhere from 10-30% of the onions will be unusable when I start to cut into them and find the rot. This is true of pretty much every grocer I've ever shopped at, with some faring worse than others (I remember almost half of the onions I'd get from an average bag at Target were unusable). Not so at Aldi's. I can buy a bag and every onion in the bag will have a nice, firm skin that feels fresh and tight when peeled, rather than old and slimy.
I suspect it's probably shelf life more than anything else--if they keep just enough stock of them that they're constantly being bought and restocked, they don't have time to sit on the shelf and wilt.
A friend of mine worked for a logistic company and he told me many times that dealing with Aldi was a nightmare for them because they were extremely demanding:
very thin profit margin, tough quality checks (when delivering the items to the warehouses the checks were done on many more samples and in a much more detailed way than what other supermarket chains did) and if the truck arrived at the warehouse anytime after the agreed delivery time you were basically screwed (ranging from at least having to provide a discount to the whole delivery being rejected therefore having to find another chain willing to buy it or just throw it away).
All this might as well explain (additionally to your "shelf life") the good & cheap onions.
I'm an onion lover - Go onions! :)
(ps: this is just a neutral comment - so far I mostly ignored Aldi, excluding the exercise bike I bought from them which is still working perfectly ~3 years later)
The attention to detail isn't always a good thing, though. Sometimes, they see the tree (wow, a thinner display cable) instead of the forest (this hinge has to flex thousands of times). Other times, they'll see a much thinner keyboard, but miss that debris could break the mechanism entirely. Even other times, they can forget to enable proper thermal controls or network drivers. Or, they can make sure your phone doesn't charge unless it wakes first. Bugger.
I mean, compared to $400 HPs or $200 Samsungs, there's definitely more attention to detail, but that isn't exactly a very fair comparison.
I'd argue that the whole consumer electronics industry is negligent, including Apple.
Most markets here sell onions loose, so one is able to select only nice ones. The stores in the city are small and heavily trafficked, so the onions tend to turn over quickly. I suspect the stocking crews also eliminate the damaged onions before putting them in the bin.
Kind of an interesting comment because growing up the comment I always heard from people was "Avoid fresh produce at Aldi" because it had a reputation for being bad.
If I have learned one thing in a lifetime, it's that freshness depends on each shop. There is no consistency even for a chain of supermarkets in the same city. It's like each one has its own supply chain.
For some, I think the low cost is a reason to shop at Aldi, but I found the experience too brutal. It was like shopping at a Goodwill grocery store, too tedious for me.
For me it's not the cost and the 'brutal' is what I want, products stay where they where the last time you where in, the signage is clear and the product choice is decent cheap, good and not expensive.
It's basically what I want a shop to be, somewhere to buy stuff not an 'experience'.
They are very similar in size or product. Aldi has more local food products than lidl, but lidl has a more interesting "aisle of shite", with their own brand of tools/garden equipment. I keep watching this aisle to expand my toolshed :)
Here is a great website to avoid missing the famous parkside tools: http://offers.kd2.org (it also shows aldi stuff)
The difference isn't that great, though I personally prefer to shop at Lidl/Rewe. Locally there is an ALDI, Lidl, Rewe and EDEKA within a 5 minute drive, by experience, ALDI is the cheapest of them but I usually prefer shopping at Lidl since they provide more higher quality stuff (ALDI doesn't always stock actual parmesan, it's very often just generic grated hard cheese). ALDI offers everything but only one of everything, Lidl has more a bit more variety.
99.9% of my Saturday grocery run can be satisfied from any of them however, so there isn't much reason to prefer any of them over the other in my area, other than EDEKA, the prices are mostly the same.
I guess I'm a weirdo who likes shopping there. Compared to Kroger or HEB I usually walk out of Aldi with a bill 50% cheaper than the other stores. We have our own bags and a picnic like basket thing we keep in the truck for Aldi stops. Yes it's "generic" but my uncle worked for a big food company that made big brand food and "generic" is often just a label change over the brand name. I can see why the rich people would think it's like shopping for food at the salvation army. No selection, a quarter to get a cart, 4-6 isles, no in car delivery, you have to bag your stuff yourself. I'll take all of those inconveniences if it means I spend 50% less per trip to the grocery store to feed us.
What kind of stuff? I usually buy raw ingredients from Aldi, maybe except curries and pre-cooked rice packets if I'm very lazy. I haven't found the pre-made stuff especially salty
The only products I encountered it so far are the frozen microwavable meals. I don't get it why they're that salty - stretching them with rice or noodles to 200% makes the saltiness acceptable.
The article does cover all these points about well-off people shopping there, too. In fact, it points out that "Aldi’s core shopper tends to make more money and have a slightly higher education level than the overall grocery shopper".
Their streamlined checkout is the secret. Much better than waiting 10 minutes in line at Wal-Mart for the privilege of checking yourself out and then exiting past the "greeter" who assumes you're a thief.
That and consistent placement that isn't constantly rearranging the whole store or order on shelves based on which brands they want to push hardest this week. Nor having 244 brands of everything competing for attention. You can load the things you do want so much faster. We mostly know exactly where stuff is going to be - as it's always been there.
Sure it breaks sometimes when they add new items, or switch in the Xmas range, but compared to the majors - very rarely.
Yes, I don't know if that's a German thing somehow exported with it, but here in Germany ALDI was always one of the places that was somehow classless, where you could meet anyone from the chancellor to bank executives to someone scraping by, everybody likes cheap and quick shopping I guess.
Except in France it’s a Euro to get a cart and you can definitely get car delivery. Most of the Carrefour/Super U type stores do that. And many of their stores are at least as big as a US store. Seems like both cultures are converging.
It definitely is! You can also get these coin thingies you can have on your keychain for it. You push it in to push out the link to the other carts, and have to put the lock back in to recover the coin.
Also in the rare case that a cart is abandoned someone will quickly bring it back or use it themselves. The person abandoning the cart basically pays the finder
I remember people used to do this in Germany when I was a kid ~20 years ago at bigger shops. They would walk up to people loading their cars and ask if they can return the cart for them. I always perceived it as a form of begging. Nowadays I don't see it anymore.
The US is the epitome of bullshit, bureaucratic jobs. Medical billing, for example, is someone taking the list of procedures a medical office performs and plugs that into a computer so that the "codes" the office uses can match the "codes" the healthcare provider uses.
I know what you're thinking, that describes a LUT (lookup table). Yes, you would be correct, a LUT is an actual profession in the USA.
I’ve never encountered an example of a real “bullshit job” (but have encountered a lot of ignorance about what different jobs entail.) Dealing with medical billing codes is not just a table lookup. It’s actually quite fuzzy and some judgment is required because the codes don’t match 1:1. (Not does the procedure the doctor actually did match perfectly to any code.) (And you can be criminally prosecuted for not doing it correctly if you’re talking about Medicare or Medicaid.)
Grocery bagging, likewise, is hardly a bullshit job. I shop at whole foods precisely so I don’t have to bag my own groceries. (And a good bagger can do it far better than I can.)
In my experience they’re faster, pack the bags with less wasted space (but not heavily, just good at fitting things appropriately), and importantly they’re not distracted by dealing with the cashier for payment or coupons or whatever other questions may arise.
Well it's not just that, your medical coder must try different related codes to see if the insurance will take a different code if the first proposed code isn't accepted by the health insurance company. 98765 not covered? Try 98764, that might be a covered procedure...
I’m sorry but this doesn’t bely my point. This sounds like insurance companies and healthcare providers have made healthcare needlessly complex. If they are the same procedure why should 2 codes exist at all?
There is a tremendous amount of tech in medicine and considerable investment at larger healthcare systems. If medical coding were such a simple automateable problem it would have been done (I mean it’s freaking billing... absolutely the strongest and direct financial incentives to solve).
The first mistake/flaw you’re making is that the healthcare provider uses codes. That is most often not the case. Even if they do, it gets more complicated with submitting claims.
There are plenty of LUTs in healthcare that are managed by the EMR, billing ain’t one.
> If medical coding were such a simple automateable problem it would have been done
This profession exists only in the US. What are the other modern healthcare systems doing so they don’t need a coder? I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Out of ~80M hourly wage workers, only ~500k of them are paid minimum wage. Given the size of the workforce and the fact that starter jobs do exist, that's not 'so many' at all..
People outside the US tend to not understand how unbelievably wealthy the country is. I’ve posted stats, you can check my history, but accounting for cost of living and taxes there are no states as poor as wealthy EU countries on average. If you ever find an Italian, talk to him about life in small towns. People are just tired of hearing about the USA because of our cultural domination, and because the media only plays bad news.
It is funny how a person's geography can shape what the view of a normal life is. I read that thinking, "In-car delivery? What the hell?" But the comment indicates matter of factly that rich people will find the lack of this to be like shopping at Salvation Army.
the crazy part about Aldi isn't just their food prices but the odd things that just show up dirt cheap. An example, a full 10x10 Gazebo that you assemble. Not with cheap like poles for full on L corners and netting. It was under $150 and just blows away stuff twice or more.
The order of pricing in my area is Aldi < Wal Mart < Target/Kroger/Publix < Drug Stores. What Wal Mart is in pricing to Kroger/Publix/etc Aldi is to Wal Mart. H Though to be honest, Aldi's brand of cinnamon rolls in the refrigerated section are amazing. The pricing on fruit, like a pint of strawberries and such is just so confusing, their price is nearly half of what the big box grocery chains it just seems that no one can profit off of it.
So usually for us its Aldi when we are near for the basics, Wal Mart for some name brands, and old retail for BOGOs. Yet for many it is the luxury of time which gives you opportunity to shop around
I spent ages ignoring the aisle of crap for being so cheap it clearly can't be any good. Then one year we found some sleeping bags for £10 or £12. Bought one and it turned out to be better made and designed than "proper" outdoor brands selling for £40 or £60. So went back for another before the offer switched. They're lasting much longer than the brands ever have too.
We've had some absurdly priced bargains in the years since.
Tesco and Asda (Walmart) have own-brands that cost more and are consistently simply crap, and to be avoided. So you learned to mostly avoid them, unless broke. Sure, Aldi do a few things badly, and a few things to avoid, but mostly they cured us of any remaining interest in preferring brand names over supermarket's own. So many brands got bought and became rubbish themselves anyway. The tiny few we do care for still, Aldi seem to stock.
Yours is a fascinating anecdote in the history of private labeling, which originated in the U.K. recession in the early 80’s wherein retailers began store brands to lower prices out of necessity to keep customer loyalty.
Having spent the last 4 years in sourcing, I can say I am excited to try store brands because I know most of the time marquee brands are more expensive because of their unit cost of marketing. I strongly speculate this is the main reason for Kraft Heinz’s struggles.
I forgot that's what kicked store brands off in the first place.
> unit cost of marketing. I strongly speculate this is the main reason for Kraft Heinz’s struggles
Accidentally so revealing: Kraft have aimed a bullet carefully and precisely at themselves, Heinz are indistinguishable from Aldi and have nothing unique to offer but expense.
Asda and Tesco own brands were always how not to do it, or almost do it. Corn flakes that had the wrong texture or were somehow too thick or hard, always with the odd burnt one. Beans that had the wrong texture or were again too hard, bread somehow devoid of flavour and texture, biscuits that had as much grit as crunch. They weren't nice, they were for students and other times of being poverty stricken. Sainsbury's managed a bit better.
Own brand beans or sauce were easy and instant to distinguish - the taste was wrong, the texture was wrong, they tasted of cheap cafe and poverty, even as they got the sugar content as equally insane. I simply can't tell the difference between Aldi and Heinz at all, even the beans with sausages. Aldi beans are stupidly cheap - 25p a tin or something, and far cheaper than Tesco, Asda and Heinz up near £1 a tin. The sauce is as cheap. There is simply no point Heinz existing.
Kraft take over Cadbury's and immediately set about ruining it - closing the factory they promised to keep open, within weeks of takeover. Throwing away Green and Black's Fair Trade element. Changing Cadbury's recipe so it has that greasy cheap American choc texture and doesn't taste or feel like chocolate any more. Reducing sizes and proportion of chocolate in choc bars and snacks. Then lying that they did none of these - and being easily proved to be lying each time - usually with viral social media photographs. I think half the UK is boycotting them to one degree or another. The degree of UK resentment they have achieved is comical.
Aldi start to make chocolate that tastes as Cadbury used to. Just about perfectly. For 90p! While Kraft not-Cadbury-any-more charge nearly £2 for comparable size. I mostly prefer Aldi's "posher" choc, but every now and then I need that childhood Cadbury fix. That's now only available from Aldi and not at all from Kraft Mondolez's often Polish made, Cadbury-in-name-only. Go figure.
They don't always manage. They admitted defeat after years trying to match taste and texture of KitKat, their Swiss muesli is an inconsistent poor substitute. They have never done British tea very well. Of the few brands in Aldi and Lidl PG and Yorkshire tea were among the first.
As final example of completely missing the point, Tesco responded to Aldi and Lidl's runaway success in the UK by launching their own discounter "Jack's". Not by suddenly trying to match quality, but by taking a distinct step down from their own-label brands, and so arriving at impossibly cheap and nasty. They were immediately ridiculed by most of the media and panned for awful goods. How could they possibly think this was the Aldi/Lidl USP? They will fail hard.
The upmarket own brands in Tesco are good. Usually cheaper than the brand name but made with proper ingredients, like Pesto made with olive oil rather than sunflower oil.
It is interesting how brands have just completely hollowed themselves out through milking profits and producing at substandard quality. If a brand doesn’t stand for quality what does it stand for? Many have gone for nostalgia and marketing, and they will die as a result.
Yeah some of those Finest and Taste the Difference were great. Often much nicer than brands. One or other produced the only shop bought cake I ever encountered with a taste and texture of home-made.
Amazing there ended up so much space beneath brands there could be 3 or 4 (with organic) distinct ranges of own brands.
I've bought two pairs of boots from Aldi - one pair about a decade ago and are still my favourite pair, and another steel-toecapped safety shoe that I wear whenever I need to go to one of our manufacturing sites. Super comfy. And I think they were about £20 a piece.
I bought a warm reflective work safety jacket from Aldi a few weeks ago -- I've been wearing it while commuting on bike, it's great. Warm, high quality materials, cost about AUD 30.
This week my local Aldi is doing a big sale on snow gear as we approach snow season -- I expect the store will be crazy with people trying to fit out the entire family with new ski jackets, etc.
A few years ago my dad and I got hiking backpacks from Aldi, as well as "hydration packs" and light cycling bags for a grand total of about $50 for the two of us. We promptly took the hiking packs and water bladders with us to the Philmont BSA reservation, and they held up just fine.
We bought some more the next time they were available, and they were even better than the first generation. I love those backpacks.
Ha,my dad is obsessed with Aldi for this reason. He'll come home with say 50 rolls of dental floss or 12 jars of marmalade as they were on sale one week, knowing they wouldn't be available again potentially for months.
I remember Aldi from Missouri, twenty-odd years ago now, and I don't have any negative memories of it. It's Poor Person Costco: They spend nothing on looks and it shows, but they don't have the bulk or the high-end products.
The only reason I wouldn't shop there now is that I don't usually carry any pocket change these days. Maybe I would if I could walk to one where I live.
Exactly. They make it seem so hard, esp "don't carry cash folks." I keep about $2 in quarters in my car. At least one is for Aldi, most are for air if I need it, and an extra few on whatever might come up. The latter are often drink machines.
Yes. They've been asking for more quarters lately, too. Some will give it to you free (complementary air) if you buy something in the store. Others stay extra greedy.
I'm a new member to Costco. I started describing Aldi as like a dollar store version of Costco. It wasn't and definitely isn't after the remodel: it's smarter than Costco on product side. It's like an evolution. That I can get more stuff from Aldi at lower prices with acceptable to great quality proves it. What Aldi is doing, selling products singles in cases, is what Costco should be doing in majority of situations. They're already doing a version of it for those special, treasure-hunt-style items like people describe for Aldi. A lot of them are way overpriced, though, compared to some upscale competitors. I'd adjust it to balance giving people brands they can brag about but aiming for more sales growth.
Also, I can't tell you how many times I'd have bought something at Costco if it wasn't a megapack, humongous size, etc. Some corroboration for my hypothesis in the fact that most of Costco's food doesn't move quickly in my visits there vs Aldi, Kroger, Walmart, Dollar General, etc. The latter stores have whole sections of shelves wiped out with lots of individual items going low. Stockers are usually all over the place stocking those isles with hardly any stocking at the Costco outside clothes and perishable foods. Even perishable they're mostly date or quality checking. Although it could be key to strategy, I'd like to see them at least experiment with smaller sizes on meat, bakery, prepared items, and common non-refrigerated.
Hmm, more like 25% cheaper, imo. But I guess it depends what you need to buy and if you go after sales/specials and what not. Aldi does have great prices, for sure.
I still love HEB though. Their bakery section is amazing (especially the fresh warm tortillas), their produce and meat is excellent, and the prices are still pretty good. HEB also has prices online with specific aisle locations for many products (was helpful when looking for frozen yuca/cassava a bit ago).
Aldi is famous for paying managers a lot of money. Far more than similar roles at other grocery stores. Not just 10% more, but in many cases 100% more.
Perhaps paying extra money for better brains leads to better decisions being made in the long run.
It is unusual for a business that is so cost focused to do that. Normally low margin businesses can't turn off that frugal mentality when it comes to rewarding staff.
In the last year in my neighborhood Aldi and Lidl have opened up stores across the street from each other. Lidl announced they were building a store and the following week Aldi announced they were opening their store across from them in a space which used to be another grocery store.
Aldi should have been able to open long before Lidl but the renovation of the space took forever. Whenever I drove by the were ever at most a handful of workers and for periods of time no work got done.
Lidl had to wait until their proposed building gained zoning approval to start construction which was several months after Aldi began construction; however, whenever I drove by the Lidl site it was full of construction workers. They managed to open only 3 or 4 months after the Aldi when it should have been at least 8 months after.
During the 3 months before Lidl opened Aldi did good business due to their low prices but no one I spoke to was thrilled with the place. The inside was dark and uninviting. The vegetable and fruit selection was poor and in very bad condition. Often it was moldy or wilted. The selection was awful but everyone assumed that was part of what you traded for the low prices.
Lidl opened and the building is full of light and welcoming. There is a frequently changing selection of quality fruit and vegetables. In almost all product categories Lidl has more selection with prices similar and frequently lower than Aldi.
The Lidl has remained constantly busy since opening and the Aldi has become a ghost town. If the experience here is typical than Aldi is going to have a tough fight on it's hands as Lidl expands in the US.
> Lidl announced they were building a store and the following week Aldi announced they were opening their store across from them
long ago, that was supposedly Burger King's strategy too: wait for McDonalds to spend the time and effort to research where to put one of their restaurants, then open a Burger King across the street.
My kids are 3 and 5 and we've shopped at Aldi continuously since they were born. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Unlocking a cart takes almost no extra effort beyond what you'd expend to get one at any other store.
Unlocking a cart is a foreign concept in the US. Not sure if the parent is in the US but any grocery store that has locked carts there is doomed to fail.
> Often with a toddler and/or car seat in hand, unlocking a cart (for example) is not just an inconvenience, it’s a dealbreaker
Interesting issue. I’ve never had that problem as a parent and have never heard anyone else raise that as an issue - having carts locked is absolutely standard in germany since at least a couple of decades. Maybe people are just used to it. There are specialized carts nowadays for wheelchair users that are not usually locked, but the normal ones are. It’s so standard that there are even plastic coins to unlock which sort of defeats the purpose.
Absolutely. Mine is so worn that it barely works, but you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. The store would give me a new one for free just for asking if they can change a bill so I have coins to unlock a cart.
The best thing ever was that in the beginning, the plastic ones sold for the same price as the face value of an equivalent coin. People would by a plastic 1 DM-sized piece for 1 DM.
"One being an nicer experience for the disabled (in my case, due to being a parent)."
I think it's incredibly disingenuous to compare your parental responsibility to being disabled, especially under the guise of experiences for disabled people.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 333 ms ] threadThe German discount grocery chains are really taking off in the US with Aldi and Lidl. I would like Rewe to come to the US next.
If I go into my local Tesco, which isn't a huge ones, they've got about 15 types of coleslaw. The Lidl has 2. But they're nice ones. The cheapest is not awful, like the cheap Tesco one. The most expensive isn't ridiculously priced, but it is superb.
Baked beans - one type at Lidl, their own brand, but it's nicer than Heinz these days. The dishwasher tablets are half the price of the branded ones but better in my dishwasher.
I honestly love both Aldi and Lidl. They do have their gaps (you need to do ~10% of your shop in Tesco for these) but for the rest...
LIDL's meat is amazing compared to asda's and they get a lot of cheese and stuff off the continent making it excellent quality for less than ASDA sells a block of bright orange 'Red Leicester'.
Other than a couple of wobbly bicycle racks out the front of the local store, Lidl UK are entirely car-orientated, in every aspect from location of the store to making pedestrians walk through the car park without pavements. That surprised me for a European chain.
My other main gripe with Lidl is that they don't do home delivery. I'm not going to walk 25 minutes to their store, dice with cars and then haul groceries home when Tesco will bring shopping into my kitchen for £4.
She started as a normal member of staff - they expect people to pitch in - you're on the checkout, moving boxes, helping deliveries, etc. Nobody is immune from having to do work.
She's now an Area Manager and still pitches in when visiting a store - she doesn't walk around with a clipboard, she helps the staff to do their job.
The wages are so much better than other supermarkets in the UK, but they expect you to work for them. Our local Aldi has been closed for 5 months while they rebuild it. I miss it so much. The Tesco nearby is far more expensive and has staff just chatting. The Lidl is more austere but is more efficient and cheaper. As soon as it opens again i'll be doing 90% of my shop there.
https://www.aldirecruitment.co.uk/area-manager-programme/our...
Some days I feel bad about how much money I make as a software engineer. It's an easy job. All I do is sit at a computer and write some code for a few hours a day. I don't have to manage employees or stock or anything like that, I just listen to music and hammer away at a keyboard.
At my tech company of around 30 people, even the most technically inclined employees don’t really understand programming. And I think my developer colleague is in the category that cannot program well. (I would optimistically say that I can.)
The coins for the carts.
Stacking crates instead of individual items.
Training every employee for everything (it's not uncommon to see a store manager operating the cash register).
Expecting customers to fill their own bags and charging for those bags.
Smaller selection.
The only unique part seems to be the tendency to promote the shop's own brand over name brands.
On a related note: Lidl tried and failed to get a foothold here in Norway with similar tactics. It didn't work. Perhaps because our mainstream store chains are already so similar to Lidl, except our domestic chains offer actual name brand products and the Lidl stores didn't, and I think that's why they failed. Also, people who are really desperate to save money can just go to Sweden to shop. It's not a very long drive.
I love that attitude. I've always felt a bit weird in very high end establishments where the staff are overly deferential.
> Foreigners often complain of the awful service they get here
In addition to your point, I think this also has something to do with people from Nordic countries being a less likely to smile at strangers than people from smiling cultures.
Not all Nordic countries even have minimum wage laws (Sweden, Norway). I'm not sure how you were able to construct that observation.
The last time I went to IKEA, their website had said they had 50+ of an item in stock, but there were 0 where it was supposed to be. I had to spend 10 minutes with an employee for them to find where the entire box had been misplaced by another employee, in another aisle.
When employees mess up (which is very common, we're all human), you can't take care of yourself. You need another employee to fix it. It has nothing to do with being a "big boy".
Despite bagging your own groceries being a universal experience I haven't yet seen a local properly use a self-serve checkout kiosk. Instead of scanning an item and putting it in a bag on the weighing platform they instead scan the items and put them on the weighing platform, then pay, then put the items in the cart, move the cart towards the store exit and then bag their groceries.
Or even better the stores that do self scan with a hand held scanner, just walk around continously bagging in your cart, put the barcode scanner in the holder when you exit and pay with NFC.
Sure, just like flights are not as cushy as they used to be. The "deterioration" is more than compensated for by the drop in price.
And to be fair, I thought that every supermarket in the world worked like that...
Can you imagine when the Americans will find automatic counters instead of cashiers? :)
No offense, but it sounds like you need to travel more if you assume that businesses everywhere work like in a few European countries. Consider the vast differences in many Asian countries, to start.
I don't think that sounds like the most likely reason. I have seen Lidl's arrival to Finland. And at least with respect to prices Norway and Finland are very similar, namely exorbitantly expensive if you compare to central Europe.
Also in Finland price competition did not use to be very fierce. They are only few players and it was an unwritten agreement that business is more comfortable to do without any price wars, consumers pay...
So when Lidl came there was massive pressure on suppliers not to sell to Lidl. If you sell to Lidl (with initially some 20-30 stores) you will not sell to us any longer (with many hundreds of stores). For several years Lidl had to ship nearly every product from central Europe. Which was not only expensive, but also were the products partly exotic to the consumers. For me as German living in Finland Lidl was better than the finest specialty shop, lots of products you could not buy anywhere else and very cheap. After a couple of years the supplier boycott started to fade away, consumer acceptance grew and my specialty shop was no longer :(
Could it have been a similar story in Norway?
Finland was also hit hard by a recession from 2008 - 2017. I understand Norway was doing much better these years and salaries are high. So the demand for low price options might have not been so wide-spread, making their market entry even more difficult.
(Edit: added a "without" to fix logic error)
Norway is a member of the common market, it is said to be the most integrated non-member. Aldi/Lidl seem to be successful in Australia, USA, and Switzerland so I don't think EU membership is a requirement for their business model to succeed. Without being an expert in the field, I'd say it's more important to find the right balance between the aggressive company model and some local practices you better do not attack. Some local managements seem to be better to find the right middle ground than others. As also mentioned in the article Walmart failed in Germany. But Mc Donald's or Ikea haven't, so it can't be generally impossible in Germany.
However, being a member of the EU inner market does not apply for agriculture in the case of Norway. I guess this means if you have are sourcing frozen french fries you can get them on the EU market, but potatoes you need to source locally or pay potential customs. But I am not sure how the border line between agriculture and everything else belonging to the common market is actually defined. Nor do I know how relevant customs on agriculture are.
> I seem to remember something like a butter (?) crisis over there some time ago. That could never happen in a country that has fluent trade with its neighbors.
France had a butter crisis in 2017. Your search engine will bring up many articles. But France is in the common EU agriculture market and France is in the Euro. So I don't think your argument really holds. Whether Norway had a any butter crisis is beyond my knowledge.
They are great on price, and the high end product are actually nice. But the rest is just average, and the cheese is really low quality (for french standard i mean) . The most annoying thing is that i can never find all the things i need. I just shop there for the basics : milk, egg, water, fruits and occasionally the tools they sell.
The really good thing with aldi (more than lidl) is that they purchase local food, and you can sometimes have really nice surprises.
The history of Aldi's efficiency [0] is pretty impressive. It actually started with two brothers nearly going broke with their small grocery store. Then they realized that if they'd reduce the diversity of goods they offer and instead sell only the most common goods in bulk, they could undercut the competition's prices. This concept was so successful that it led to a multi billion dollar business which is still dictating the prices of common groceries in Germany.
Still there are other supermarket chains that have adapted to the Aldi strategy and are actually causing growth issues for Aldi. Their concept is to offer basic goods at the same price as Aldi does, then upsell more special and higher price items while offering a better shopping experience. I guess that's what's going to happen in the US as well eventually.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi#History
I highly doubt that. It's illegal to sell under cost in Europe.
[0] https://www.handelsblatt.com/archiv/dauerhafter-verkauf-unte...
It seems prohibited in Spain since 1991, whereas France is at least 1986. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do;jsessionid=952...
I think this contrasts with a place like WalMart where employees are often less-than-helpful, so much of the products are low quality, etc.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/secret-ho...
The companies operate in different geographical areas. Originally, the brothers split across the Rhine, but now Aldi Süd includes North America, Australia, and half of Europe. Aldi Nord operates in the other half of Europe.
The same trust that owns Aldi Nord also owns Trader Joe's (acquired in 1979), and they use similar operational values: (minimal advertising, limited selection, private label goods, work ethic, etc)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi
Brothers starting a company and splitting up later to produce two successful companies seems to be a German thing. The Dassler brothers did it too, forming Adidas and Puma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas#Split_and_rivalry_with_...)
Back to Aldi: it always surprises me that the two Aldi’s don’t get accused of forming a cartel. It is fairly clear that they agreed to split the market. I guess that doesn’t get them into trouble because a) there are other large players and b) they can’t be accused of doing it to prevent a price war.
But how do you find private label suppliers for 1000+ products, how do you know how to define great products, how do you verify that, and do you still manage prices low ?
That's a key skill aldi acquired over decades, and it's really hard to copy.
Private labels order from the brand names. Sometimes they order a different recipe, but often it is the exact same recipe as the name brand just the box is different. If there is still more pickles in the vat after making 1000 jars of the private label they will finish the vat into 17 jars of their brand. Sometimes a batch will not meet the brand's quality standards (taste) but it is still food safe so they dump it into a private label box with lower standards.
Six years later, the impact of ALDI and LIDL have effected fundamental change in the giant, Supermarket Chain, the whole corporate strategy seems to emulate what ALDI does well and there is a pilot where some of the smaller stores are rebranded under a different name and basically modelled on a German discounter.
ALDI and LIDL have changed the UK supermarket landscape in a fundamental way and customers seem to love it.
The rest is great!
I suspect it's probably shelf life more than anything else--if they keep just enough stock of them that they're constantly being bought and restocked, they don't have time to sit on the shelf and wilt.
very thin profit margin, tough quality checks (when delivering the items to the warehouses the checks were done on many more samples and in a much more detailed way than what other supermarket chains did) and if the truck arrived at the warehouse anytime after the agreed delivery time you were basically screwed (ranging from at least having to provide a discount to the whole delivery being rejected therefore having to find another chain willing to buy it or just throw it away).
All this might as well explain (additionally to your "shelf life") the good & cheap onions.
I'm an onion lover - Go onions! :)
(ps: this is just a neutral comment - so far I mostly ignored Aldi, excluding the exercise bike I bought from them which is still working perfectly ~3 years later)
I mean, compared to $400 HPs or $200 Samsungs, there's definitely more attention to detail, but that isn't exactly a very fair comparison.
I'd argue that the whole consumer electronics industry is negligent, including Apple.
It's basically what I want a shop to be, somewhere to buy stuff not an 'experience'.
What are the tangible differences, which one do you prefer?
Here is a great website to avoid missing the famous parkside tools: http://offers.kd2.org (it also shows aldi stuff)
99.9% of my Saturday grocery run can be satisfied from any of them however, so there isn't much reason to prefer any of them over the other in my area, other than EDEKA, the prices are mostly the same.
Sure it breaks sometimes when they add new items, or switch in the Xmas range, but compared to the majors - very rarely.
Europe.
I know what you're thinking, that describes a LUT (lookup table). Yes, you would be correct, a LUT is an actual profession in the USA.
Grocery bagging, likewise, is hardly a bullshit job. I shop at whole foods precisely so I don’t have to bag my own groceries. (And a good bagger can do it far better than I can.)
Are they just faster?
There is a tremendous amount of tech in medicine and considerable investment at larger healthcare systems. If medical coding were such a simple automateable problem it would have been done (I mean it’s freaking billing... absolutely the strongest and direct financial incentives to solve).
The first mistake/flaw you’re making is that the healthcare provider uses codes. That is most often not the case. Even if they do, it gets more complicated with submitting claims.
There are plenty of LUTs in healthcare that are managed by the EMR, billing ain’t one.
This profession exists only in the US. What are the other modern healthcare systems doing so they don’t need a coder? I’ll leave that for you to discover.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm
You get it back when you return the trolley though.
The order of pricing in my area is Aldi < Wal Mart < Target/Kroger/Publix < Drug Stores. What Wal Mart is in pricing to Kroger/Publix/etc Aldi is to Wal Mart. H Though to be honest, Aldi's brand of cinnamon rolls in the refrigerated section are amazing. The pricing on fruit, like a pint of strawberries and such is just so confusing, their price is nearly half of what the big box grocery chains it just seems that no one can profit off of it.
So usually for us its Aldi when we are near for the basics, Wal Mart for some name brands, and old retail for BOGOs. Yet for many it is the luxury of time which gives you opportunity to shop around
We've had some absurdly priced bargains in the years since.
Tesco and Asda (Walmart) have own-brands that cost more and are consistently simply crap, and to be avoided. So you learned to mostly avoid them, unless broke. Sure, Aldi do a few things badly, and a few things to avoid, but mostly they cured us of any remaining interest in preferring brand names over supermarket's own. So many brands got bought and became rubbish themselves anyway. The tiny few we do care for still, Aldi seem to stock.
Having spent the last 4 years in sourcing, I can say I am excited to try store brands because I know most of the time marquee brands are more expensive because of their unit cost of marketing. I strongly speculate this is the main reason for Kraft Heinz’s struggles.
> unit cost of marketing. I strongly speculate this is the main reason for Kraft Heinz’s struggles
Accidentally so revealing: Kraft have aimed a bullet carefully and precisely at themselves, Heinz are indistinguishable from Aldi and have nothing unique to offer but expense.
Asda and Tesco own brands were always how not to do it, or almost do it. Corn flakes that had the wrong texture or were somehow too thick or hard, always with the odd burnt one. Beans that had the wrong texture or were again too hard, bread somehow devoid of flavour and texture, biscuits that had as much grit as crunch. They weren't nice, they were for students and other times of being poverty stricken. Sainsbury's managed a bit better.
Own brand beans or sauce were easy and instant to distinguish - the taste was wrong, the texture was wrong, they tasted of cheap cafe and poverty, even as they got the sugar content as equally insane. I simply can't tell the difference between Aldi and Heinz at all, even the beans with sausages. Aldi beans are stupidly cheap - 25p a tin or something, and far cheaper than Tesco, Asda and Heinz up near £1 a tin. The sauce is as cheap. There is simply no point Heinz existing.
Kraft take over Cadbury's and immediately set about ruining it - closing the factory they promised to keep open, within weeks of takeover. Throwing away Green and Black's Fair Trade element. Changing Cadbury's recipe so it has that greasy cheap American choc texture and doesn't taste or feel like chocolate any more. Reducing sizes and proportion of chocolate in choc bars and snacks. Then lying that they did none of these - and being easily proved to be lying each time - usually with viral social media photographs. I think half the UK is boycotting them to one degree or another. The degree of UK resentment they have achieved is comical.
Aldi start to make chocolate that tastes as Cadbury used to. Just about perfectly. For 90p! While Kraft not-Cadbury-any-more charge nearly £2 for comparable size. I mostly prefer Aldi's "posher" choc, but every now and then I need that childhood Cadbury fix. That's now only available from Aldi and not at all from Kraft Mondolez's often Polish made, Cadbury-in-name-only. Go figure.
They don't always manage. They admitted defeat after years trying to match taste and texture of KitKat, their Swiss muesli is an inconsistent poor substitute. They have never done British tea very well. Of the few brands in Aldi and Lidl PG and Yorkshire tea were among the first.
As final example of completely missing the point, Tesco responded to Aldi and Lidl's runaway success in the UK by launching their own discounter "Jack's". Not by suddenly trying to match quality, but by taking a distinct step down from their own-label brands, and so arriving at impossibly cheap and nasty. They were immediately ridiculed by most of the media and panned for awful goods. How could they possibly think this was the Aldi/Lidl USP? They will fail hard.
It is interesting how brands have just completely hollowed themselves out through milking profits and producing at substandard quality. If a brand doesn’t stand for quality what does it stand for? Many have gone for nostalgia and marketing, and they will die as a result.
Amazing there ended up so much space beneath brands there could be 3 or 4 (with organic) distinct ranges of own brands.
This week my local Aldi is doing a big sale on snow gear as we approach snow season -- I expect the store will be crazy with people trying to fit out the entire family with new ski jackets, etc.
We bought some more the next time they were available, and they were even better than the first generation. I love those backpacks.
The only reason I wouldn't shop there now is that I don't usually carry any pocket change these days. Maybe I would if I could walk to one where I live.
Also, I can't tell you how many times I'd have bought something at Costco if it wasn't a megapack, humongous size, etc. Some corroboration for my hypothesis in the fact that most of Costco's food doesn't move quickly in my visits there vs Aldi, Kroger, Walmart, Dollar General, etc. The latter stores have whole sections of shelves wiped out with lots of individual items going low. Stockers are usually all over the place stocking those isles with hardly any stocking at the Costco outside clothes and perishable foods. Even perishable they're mostly date or quality checking. Although it could be key to strategy, I'd like to see them at least experiment with smaller sizes on meat, bakery, prepared items, and common non-refrigerated.
Hmm, more like 25% cheaper, imo. But I guess it depends what you need to buy and if you go after sales/specials and what not. Aldi does have great prices, for sure.
I still love HEB though. Their bakery section is amazing (especially the fresh warm tortillas), their produce and meat is excellent, and the prices are still pretty good. HEB also has prices online with specific aisle locations for many products (was helpful when looking for frozen yuca/cassava a bit ago).
Perhaps paying extra money for better brains leads to better decisions being made in the long run.
Food4Less in the central valley of CA have done that for years. They are pretty cheap too.
Aldi should have been able to open long before Lidl but the renovation of the space took forever. Whenever I drove by the were ever at most a handful of workers and for periods of time no work got done.
Lidl had to wait until their proposed building gained zoning approval to start construction which was several months after Aldi began construction; however, whenever I drove by the Lidl site it was full of construction workers. They managed to open only 3 or 4 months after the Aldi when it should have been at least 8 months after.
During the 3 months before Lidl opened Aldi did good business due to their low prices but no one I spoke to was thrilled with the place. The inside was dark and uninviting. The vegetable and fruit selection was poor and in very bad condition. Often it was moldy or wilted. The selection was awful but everyone assumed that was part of what you traded for the low prices.
Lidl opened and the building is full of light and welcoming. There is a frequently changing selection of quality fruit and vegetables. In almost all product categories Lidl has more selection with prices similar and frequently lower than Aldi.
The Lidl has remained constantly busy since opening and the Aldi has become a ghost town. If the experience here is typical than Aldi is going to have a tough fight on it's hands as Lidl expands in the US.
long ago, that was supposedly Burger King's strategy too: wait for McDonalds to spend the time and effort to research where to put one of their restaurants, then open a Burger King across the street.
Funny how two grocery store stories appeared on HN within a day of each other.
Often with a toddler and/or car seat in hand, unlocking a cart (for example) is not just an inconvenience, it’s a dealbreaker.
I’m into the pursuit of efficiency and low prices, but there are some real world benefits of “full service” grocery stores.
One being an nicer experience for the disabled (in my case, due to being a parent).
I’m guessing they don’t have those motorized carts either?
Anyway, I’m happy that there are alternatives. We’ll probably give Aldi another chance when our kids are older.
Interesting issue. I’ve never had that problem as a parent and have never heard anyone else raise that as an issue - having carts locked is absolutely standard in germany since at least a couple of decades. Maybe people are just used to it. There are specialized carts nowadays for wheelchair users that are not usually locked, but the normal ones are. It’s so standard that there are even plastic coins to unlock which sort of defeats the purpose.
The best thing ever was that in the beginning, the plastic ones sold for the same price as the face value of an equivalent coin. People would by a plastic 1 DM-sized piece for 1 DM.
Wat?
I think it's incredibly disingenuous to compare your parental responsibility to being disabled, especially under the guise of experiences for disabled people.
As soon as they can reach, unlocking the cart is the child's job anyway.