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These huge grocery store empires have largely pursued a strategy of moving upscale in the last 5 years or so. While this has been very successful, it may prove a challenge in the next 5 years or so, as less shoppers care about finding the perfect cave-aged cheese and more care about affording staples.

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You can't talk about grocery stores in the US without mentioning the roles of "dollar stores", "pharmacies" and the food desserts that created such a demand for these alternative grocers. Maybe traditional grocers moving upmarket is a reaction to the low end needs being serviced by these market gap-fillers.

Edit: Fixed one spelling mistake but not the other that I was called out for ;-)

deserts

Dessert is twice as good. An elementary teacher said that once and it’s still the only way I remember the difference 40 years later. Pass it along.

I was taught "Which do you want more of?" You want more desserts, so desserts has more s's than desert.

Doh! I'm one of those guys who spell checks every meaningless post to death and this was the ONE TIME I didn't lol - oh well I love this place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think Aldi's strategy of cheap, quality staples will continue to get traction. Lidl's trying to have it both ways and doesn't seem to be as successful.

I am Traders Joe fanatic. I luuuuv Traders Joe. I know TJ is owned by one of the Aldi brothers though I can never remember which one. It doesn’t matter I like both TJ and Aldi (America). My other favorite grocer is Costco and Hmart (Korean).

I’ve noticed it across all the grocery stores - even Walmart(!!) - I think the upscale stuff is an attempt to maintain some profit when faced with squeezing margins. Though I have to wonder how much of the upscale stuff never sells and gets thrown away, dumpsters behind grocery stores are depressing, never look in them.

Retail as a whole has split into economy and luxury. Brands serving the middle struggle. Since Walmart is tough to compete with on economy pushing most traditional stores towards luxury. They’ve also seen the growth at Whole Foods and such in an otherwise low growth, low margin business. I think Walmart is just constantly experimenting and their overall strategy is to be the economical choice.

Aldi moved into my city and is now the "budget" grocer after the old one tried to become more upscale.

Dollar stores however are growing rapidly. Where I grew up used to be upscale now there's dollar stores everywhere.

If anything, Albertson's took their acquisitions lower-end.

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