Where Wal-Mart Failed, Aldi Succeeds (2011)
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Aldi not only outcompetes most supermarkets -- including ones that are traditionally considered inexpensive like Market Basket -- but can go toe-to-toe with warehouse clubs and bulk services like Amazon Subscribe & Save. Having spent far more time in supermarkets than I'd care to admit, it's pretty obvious as to why:
* The stores are smaller. They pay less in rent.
* They have a limited selection of inventory. Don't expect lots of pre-prepared food, and fancy pre-made items. In fact, expect very little. It's mostly staples with some extremely common packaged convenience foods.
* As a result of the first two items, they don't need much in the way of staff to cover the store. They're spending their time restocking the store as stuff runs out, so things don't run out. However if you want some items, your best bet is to go at open.
* Which is 9AM. They also close at 9AM. Not running 24 hours means lower costs.
* They have few registers. My local store has four. However they don't bag your groceries. Your groceries get dumped into another cart at the end of the register, and you go pack it yourself. The speed in which a person can be checked out is VERY quick as a result.
* You pay $0.25 for a cart, and get it back when you return it. The upside is no one is outside rounding up carts.
* They provide no bags. At all. Though they'll happily let you take the empty boxes items came in.
Compared to the local BigCo supermarket chain, they come in at about 40% cheaper, even if you're buying store brand from the BigCo chain. On many items, they undercut both the local BJs and Costco, despite not selling that kind of quantity. They do it by providing exactly what you need at a grocery store, and nothing you don't.
Even compared to Market Basket -- which I do love and still go to for some things -- they still easily come in 15% cheaper. There are some things I can't get at Aldi (so I'll go to Market Basket, as I'll go to Trader Joe's to get high quality produce easier), but damned if they aren't a super efficient setup.
In my experience, I would have to disagree. For what I have seen at the two nearest stores to me, 50% of the store's inventory is boxed, canned, and frozen foods. True, they do have your staples (your meats, veg, and dairy), but to say they have "very little", at least in my experience, is simply not true. In fact, the wife and I get most of our boxed and canned goods at Aldi.
> However if you want some items, your best bet is to go at open.
I've been at our stores pretty much at random hours and have never been disappointed in the quantity of inventory. It sounds like you might be visiting a mismanaged store.
> They provide no bags. At all. Though they'll happily let you take the empty boxes items came in.
Not true. Again, at least where I am at. They offer paper bags for $0.10 and heavier reusable plastic for $0.30 (to the best of my recollection). They also offer the washable heavy-duty fabric variety as well.
I should've clarified more on the "fancy pre-made items". Most of the larger national chain supermarkets have grown more and more into this. In particular, one location in my area (in an affluent neighborhood) has dedicated over 1/3rd of its floor space to "hot and ready to eat" take-out style food, prepared on-site, and priced at $10/pound (excluding things like sushi). It's a common sight to see a cart filled with nothing but basically take-out boxes, bakery items, bottled water, and alcohol.
That particular store in that particular location, if I included frozen meals, and boxed/canned meals, it's literally 3 out of every 4 square feet.
>However if you want some items, your best bet is to go at open. I've been at our stores pretty much at random hours and have never been disappointed in the quantity of inventory. It sounds like you might be visiting a mismanaged store.
No, this is more of living in a major city, and the location's relatively small size (the adjacent CVS is about 50% larger). I would compare the size of its produce area to 16-20% of that of a typical chain supermarket. As it result, it depletes very quickly. This means that the highest quality stuff is gone within 10-15 minutes of open.
I wouldn't say that's unique to Aldi either. If you don't go to Market Basket close to open, don't expect high-quality produce to be there when you show up, and some items may be gone entirely. The reason being is the area MBs are always packed except right at open.
For pre-made, as you describe, yes, Aldi has nothing like that beyond maybe some sort of yogurt parfait. Stores like Kroger, Whole Foods, Giant Eagle, and the other major supermarkets reflect what you describe. It seems that my wife and I encompass a shrinking minority or people who eat home-cooked meals more often than not.
As for inventory availability, I guess it does depend on the store, as ours have been fairly good with keeping stock available. This is in a city (Columbus, Ohio) of 800,000+ with the 'burbs encompassing another million or so. We are becoming quite a foodie town, and I think that reflects a lot on the availability of fresh produce. We have many ethnic supermarkets as well, much larger than Aldi, that have a VERY wide assortment of foreign fruits and vegetables. I would have to say we probably have a lot of brokers here.
I guess you mean 9PM.
In Europe, they also don't have shelves for all products. They often just ride the carts directly from a truck into the shop, letting customers open the boxes and take out items.
Yes, that means they do not price individual items, either. I don't know whether that has changed now that everything has a barcode, but their personnel just used to know a short _code_ for every product, and the register knew what it cost.
It also used to be impossible to call Aldi shops because they didn't have land lines. That cuts more costs as one would think, because personnel that answers the phone cannot do other work.
Aldi is really "lean and mean".
On the other hand I hate the shrink-wrapped produce. I get that it avoids scales, speeds checkout, and reduces waste from customers handling for the "perfect" produce, but three peppers wrapped to a styrofoam tray feels so wasteful.
The pay is even so good that when Aldi expanded to Switzerland, there were lots of people who feared or complained preliminarily that Aldi would reduce the average wage level of the region. The opposite happened: After Aldi opened some shops in Switzerland there were people who complained that Aldi pays more for shelf stockers than lots of other professions after four years of hard apprenticeship:
> http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/AldiLoehne-provoziere...
The most telling sign of the work environment: They had low turnover. Most retail seems to be the opposite.
They're sinking $1.6 billion into store expansion and renovation. I live near one of the prototype remodel stores and it's really nice.
https://www.ft.com/content/41644020-ee28-11e6-930f-061b01e23...
They also take credit cards now.
My guess is they initially avoided it due to costs (swipe/interchange fees), but looked at the improvement to checkout speeds and figured likely consider it a wash now.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearson/2016/10/03/lidl-is...
Aldi is a cool store, but the stock is really haphazard, especially produce, and the meat sucks.
If you're really saving a lot of money, you're eating a lot of processed crap.
Most Aldi shoppers overlook that stuff for the more attractive cookies/frozen meals/desserts and miss the value.
I think the aldi nearest to my home does not even sell pre-processed meals outside of frozen stuff (like Pizza) and canned soups.
In germany, they also have a rotating selection of cheap random stuff, ranging from laptops over garden chairs and tools to rugs and sheets. It's usually a very limited supply and most of the time not that bad for the pricetag (even the laptops).
That said, I prefer the competitor "Penny", because I know the layout better and they are a bit nicer, at least in my town.