So I like to wander Trader Joe’s once in a while, but as they don’t do delivery or curbside pickup, and I am asthmatic and avoiding people and buildings other than my own home these days like the plague (pun intended), I’m apparently not going there anytime soon. Aldi, however, does free curbside pickup or Instacart delivery. I haven’t really shopped there, but have heard that they have improved their merchandise quite a lot in recent years, and there are some good buys, particularly on private label brands and random international groceries. And yet we don’t really seem to have regular threads about them here like we have for TJ’s.
To be honest, I’ve never tried anything they sold that I didn’t think was as good as—or better—than the national brand leader in that category. Indeed, you can tell from the packaging and other clues, that much of their stuff is private-label versions of the national leaders.
But because their stores are so much smaller than big supermarkets, not only do they not have room for competing brands, they don’t find room for lower-volume variants. So, for example, they don’t stock conical coffee filters; only basket style. And a lot of the really good stuff is the “here today, gone tomorrow” items sold under their Specially Selected and Deutsche Kuche brands. In the next couple of weeks, for instance, you’ll see Winternacht Dark Chocolate (also Milk Chocolate) Gingerbread Hearts. A couple times a year they have delicious imported (shoestring) potato sticks. Now through New Year’s they’ll have all kinds of stuff for entertaining: gourmet crackers, imported cheeses, shrimp rings, cheesecake samplers, etc.
Chocuer Rich Dark chocolate bars. They come in a bundle of 4 (I think) mini-bars
Countryside Creamery spreadable butter (butter with olive oil and sea salt)
All of the bread products I’ve had are good
Their chips are just as good as any others I’ve had and that includes name brands
To me the difference is Trader Joes has much more ‘exotic’ level foods, while Aldi’s have more staples. If they had both together in the same store they would have a great selection of choices.
A lot of Aldi’s stuff is as craptastic as you’d expect from a lowest-price store. But not all of it. Their beer/wine selections often fight above their weight class, as they’re almost always German/European imports that are bargain priced. So maybe not Paulaner Oktoberfest, but the output of a second-tier German brewery nonetheless.
Their Deutche Kuche line is always interesting and usually pretty good- it’s their German food specialty line with stuff like cookies, cheeses, sausages, sauerkraut, pastries/cookies, etc… They ramp it up around the holidays, FYI.
Their snack foods are usually pretty solid as well- chips, cookies, etc…
The basic notion behind Aldi is that it is a store where you purchase staples, basics, and “stock up” items. What, exactly, is in the aisle will vary somewhat based on where you live - my local store ALWAYS has mangoes, for example, but before I moved out here I never saw a mango in Aldi’s.
What should you try there? To start, stuff you would ordinarily purchase. Would you normally buy canned mixed vegees? Great place to stock up on those. Condiments. Basic baking items - you can, for example, baking soda there. Just one brand of baking soda, but you can get it there. You can also get flour there - but not 12 varieties of flour. There’s not a huge variety of frozen meals and sides, but you can get what they offer cheap. And sometimes you find unexpected things - for example, my local Aldi’s was the first store in this area that started carrying edamame on a regular basis.
The do have a highly seasonal aspect to some items - you won’t find canned pumpkin outside of fall/pre-Thanksgiving. Some things seem very much a test-marketing thing - I once picked up frozen sushi from Aldi. It was… edible. Apparently not a hit.
They have an array of vegetarian items, organic items, and vegan items if that matters to you.
You can get dirt-cheap hamburger. You can also get grass-fed beef and ground buffalo there, too.
So… start with your pantry staples and some basic items and go from there.
Right, the first thing that made me think of it was the desire to buy some cheap basics in reasonable-sized packages for donation to my local community food pantry cabinet. Aldi seemed to have the best prices on things like rice, beans, mac and cheese, etc. in quantities smaller than Costco. Basic pantry commodities like that (or salt, which I needed to restock, or a few other basics that don’t have giant variations in quantity) seemed like a good starting point, but I was also wondering about the quality of some of the less basic things I might use to fill out a grocery order. And I always like to try new things - cheeses, crackers, dried fruit/nuts, wine, chocolate, etc., which they have in reasonable sizes, if a bit more expensive per unit than something analogous might be in a giant quantity at Costco.
Can anyone comment on the quality of their meat, fish, and other fresh goods? We are pretty well-set for those at the moment, but I might try those next.
I’ll second the brownie mix, those are good! The wine I’ve gotten there was decent, didn’t blow my mind but I didn’t have to mix it with soda to make it be drinkable either. The bread was also good, I got some naan bread at half the price I’ve seen elsewhere.
Okay, here’s a secondary question: one of the things I like about Trader Joe’s is that their prepared foods don’t tend to have a lot of artificial additives and preservatives in them, which I avoid. How true is that of Aldi house brands? The bummer about shopping on Instacart is that you can’t read labels…
Here are the items I’ve been particularly impressed with:
Savoritz Cheese Crackers: 100% as good as Cheez-its or Cheese Nips, lower price.
Benton’s Fig Bars: 100% as good as Fig Newtons, lower price.
Elevation Protein Powder: half the price of most protein powders, just as good and low-carb to boot.
Already mentioned, Chocquer chocolates.
Countryside Creamery Whipping Cream: at (currently) $1.79 a pint, damn near the cheapest cream you’ll find; only Walmart’s quarts of Great Value brand cream are cheaper.
Brookdale canned Corned Beef: cheaper than Hormel or other major name brands, just as good.
Qualified upvote: some reviewers downvote Aldi’s Northern Catch Pink Salmon; I myself have never had a problem with it and the price is good.
Honorable mention: their cheese and butter are comparable in both price and quality to the various generic/store brands some outlets carry. Not especially better but no reason not to get them at Aldi as long as you’re there.
Very spotty. Most of their ice cream is really bad, but the Apple Pie Ice Cream is amazing. Some other special flavors are good, but most common ones are really bad. Walmart and other stores have a better ice cream supplier.
Pre-covid I used to shop first at Aldi and get everything - meat, fish, cheese, vegetable, fruit, bread, etc. - there FIRST and whatever I couldn’t get at Aldi I got at the store I worked at.
Aldi tends to sell their meat pre-sealed, so unless you’re headed to a butcher shop where you can get custom-cuts it’s not that much different from other stores.
Frozen chicken tends to have broth/saline in it… but then so do most other ones.
About the only two things I won’t buy there unless I absolutely have to do so would be the toilet paper and facial tissues.
As for the special items (limited time only) - the computer keyboard I’m using to type this is about six years old now and we bought it at Aldi. The color is a bit weird but it has been a work horse. The salad spinner I bought there gave me 10 years of service before meeting an unfortunate demise but gave great service until then.
Bottom line: almost everything is good quality or better.
That varies. They have a line of organic stuff and that has minimal additives. The canned goods for beans/vegees/meats/etc. and minimal to no additives. The frozen meals and the baked goods do have additives unless, as I said, they’re the specifically organic lines.
I agree, it’s hard to impossible to read labels with Instacart.
[quote=“Eva_Luna, post:1, topic:924261, full:true”]
… I haven’t really shopped there, but have heard that they have improved their merchandise quite a lot in recent years,
… [/quote]They certainly haven’t improved their treatment of workers, so I’ll not be shopping there!
And there are 2 Aldi’s companies, Aldi North & Aldi South – the brother owners split years ago, and split the company between them. (Divided geographically, as an anti-competitive practice.) In the USA, we have both – Aldi North operates under the alias Trader Joe.
At least around here …
Aldi’s produce is distinctly cheaper than our mainstream national chain Winn-Dixie. The selection is much more limited. The fruits don’t last as long as W-Ds do, which limits the attraction of stocking up on, say, 2 lbs of fresh blue- or blackberries.
I have no experience with their ordinary beef, pork, chicken; just haven’t tried it. It’s definitely factory packaged rather than cut & packaged at the store.
They have a nice sliced ham suitable for sandwiches; not as nasty sweet as the US name brands WD carries. They often have frozen bone-out leg of lamb that other stores do not and that’s darn good.
For me, Aldi’s represents cheap good snacks, cheap tolerable wine to take to parties for other people to drink, and cheap, if short-lived produce. And the lamb. In a definitely “pile it high and sell it cheap bargain basement” atmosphere. Which includes being more crowded than other stores.
Post-COVID I haven’t had the need to brave the crowds for what little extra they have that I want, not need.
You didn’t ask, but my attitude to TJs post-COVID is the same: Any/everything I’d buy there are optional purchases that aren’t worth dealing with the crowding and attendant disease risk.
True, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Trader Joes existed for decades and grew to near US-national scope long before the founders sold out to Aldi. So although yes, TJ’s is owned by a branch of the Aldi family’s corporations, no TJ’s wasn’t created by, nor did it grow up as, an Aldi-style operation. The emphasis is very different.