No, I swear I thought I read that article about TJs and Aldi’s being connected somehow
Yep. The one on Franklin is indeed depressing. I stop there for a few things when I bike to the library, but it’s not a place I’d do any serious shopping.
I’m the same way about Wal-Mart. Shopping there feels like someone sucked the life out of me.
My town just got an Aldi’s and I love it. $1.79 for lowfat cottage cheese vs. $3.99 at the regular store for the same thing - no taste difference. The 2.79 Moose Tracks ice cream tastes the same as the $5.45 cartons from the regular store, according to my SO who loves the stuff. I also buy their frozen fruit, and the sliced roast beef was good.
I see no problem with the bleak stores, none of my local groceries are any more ambient.
The only Aldi’s I’ve been to was well lit and pretty well laid out. Didn’t seem too bad, no different than any other warehouse type of store. This particular store is pretty small as well and the selection is limited, but the quality of their food was just fine. It often meant the difference between me having 4 weeks worth of food by shopping there, instead of two weeks worth at any other supermarket. A dollar is literally doubled at Aldi’s.
Their frozen Whole Chickens and Frozen Bulk Pork loin are great and a great deal-- pound for pound and quality wise they can’t be beat… They even had fresh mangoes at a bargain. I like them- really the only place I can afford to shop sometimes.
Admittedly, it does have a latent German or European supermarket design, but that’s just the way supermarkets look in Germany and Europe.
Love Aldi’s. But then again, I have 5 kids. TO me, a loaf of store brand white bread, is a loaf of store brand white bread. $.45 at Aldi’s, $1.19 at Cub ( a warehouse type grocery store) and 1.39 at the local in town grocery store. I go through about a loaf a day. It adds up. Produce they really are more than competitive. I have bought a strawberries at Aldi's for .69 a pound, while the other two stores were selling at $2.99 a pound. We would not eat as many fruit and vegetables as we do at those prices. Listen, I can get a 5 pound box of tangerines and it’ll be gone in a *day. * The second box will take a little longer.
Aldi’s is austere, but clean and organized. They are new to the Twin Cities area, so they might be on their best behavior, or just because they are newer stores, newer employees. The employees are efficient and polite, friendly. I usually feel like an ass, because I fill two carts full of groceries, most people are buying less than 20 items, but they open another line. It’s about 30 minutes away, and I go about 3 times a month. Well worth the drive, and I typically combine trips, save on gas, time. I save about 30% from Cub. Which is significant.
Can’t find many specialty items there, and variety is lacking, but on the other hand, does any one really need over 100 varieties and sizes of BBQ sauce?
I look at that way too, as long as I can get the products I really want.
I was really pleased to find genuine Chablis in TJ’s for less than nine dollars a bottle. It turned out to be pretty good, too.
I don’t know how they manage to keep the prices on European wines down, what with the exchange rate and all.
I love Aldi’s. Sure, not all of their brands are that great, but some of their stuff I actually PREFER to the name brands. They have these crackers that are just like Ritz, only they’re bigger and so tasty. They’re “Cambridge” brand, IIRC. And the Garden Veggie flavored ones remind me of Chicken in a Biskit crackers.
Their salsa is really good too. And they have GREAT honey mustard.
My mother loves Aldi’s because she’s on a tight budget for food, and she can get their frozen Chicken Cordon Bleu and feel extravagant. Their cream cheese is good, and very cheap, though I still stick with Philly when I make cheesecake. But to smear on crackers, it’s fine. Their seafood cocktail sauce is very good, and they had a great price on frozen shrimp, I’ve never been in one when there has been a line, and I usually only buy one or two items at a time, so the fact that I always forget to bring bags isn’t important. Oh, and the pouches of shelled sunflower seeds that I pay 50 cents for elsewhere are only 39 cents a Aldi’s. I just wish they carried more plastic storage containers…I need a good price on those!
I was thoroughly creeped, the one time I went. The other customers acted weird towards me because I was strolling along looking at things. It’s like you have to know what you’re going to get, get it, and go!
If you go later in the week than Monday, you can forget about finding any of the really good deals. The sales paper comes out on Sunday and the store opens early in the morning. By noon on Monday, everything is gone.
As someone else mentioned, I was also bothered by the unknown brands. OTOH, my husband wasn’t bothered a bit. But then, he’ll buy potted meat at the dollar store. :dubious:
I occasionally go to my local Aldi’s – usually if I’m washing a comforter or gambeson at the laundromat next door. It is odd seeing so many brands that don’t exist anywhere else. I like the whipped yogurt, and got an assortment 12-pack of a German brand of beer I never heard of for about eight bucks.
The oddest thing about the store is that not only do they not bag the groceries for you – they don’t supply bags. I’ve forgotten to bring my own, and had to walk out with an armload of loose items.
:dubious: That’s weird, last time I went to one around here, they had big plastic bags with handles for something like 5-10 cents each.
They also used to not take debit card, and since I rarely carry much cash, I didn’t go very often. That was a welcomed change.
Mine sells bags and also takes debit cards.
The brand thing - well, I noticed the Aldi cheese is called “Happy Farms” and the stuff that isn’t the Kraft brand at my grocery story is called “Crystal Farms”, and the “Happy Farms” and “Crystal Farms” logos are exactly the same. Coincidence? :dubious: I can’t see paying extra because the brand name is a little is different when it is the same exact stuff my grocery sells for more $$.
Plus I went to the Aldi grand opening and the lady manning the booth held up a can of Aldi brand soup and told me the stuff was made by Campbell’s. She told me the Aldi stuff is made by major manufacturers and relabeled with the Aldi brand labels.
Aldi does supply bags; they just don’t hid the cost of them in every price like other stores. It’s the norm in Germany (and Europe) to have to buy your own bags. Plus Aldi bags are a bit higher quality than other grocery stores so you can reuse them.
Yes, I find them weird too. All the similar stores (Lidl et al.) that compete in the ultra-cheap UK market are also bizarre - if they’ve not made their way to the US yet, it can only be a matter of time.
I think part of what makes them so alien is the fact that they’re extrememly popular with continentals. When you enter the store, it’s like entering a foreign country - no other customers in the place speaks English. Nobody smiles. Nobody even talks, half the time. The cashiers are strange too, tapping the keyboard at about a billion miles an hour (Jesus, get some barcode scanners).
I am creeped out by Aldis. Not because of their no frills stores, but because they fired a manager who opened a safe when a gun was pointed at he head. This was years ago, but it was on a major news show and corroborated by other sources and so I have not shopped there since.
Here’s some Wiki on Aldi. I like it, and scoot thru my local one’s every other month. They’re just starting here in the South, in abandoned strip mall lots, but are pretty friendly. I go there to buy the same stuff I would at a regular supermarket, and stock up; salsa, onions, some vegs, and their deluxe pasta seems nicely imported from Italy.
I don’t care at all about frills or shiny appeal, so Aldi is fine by me. I really wish that true tracing of who packages their brands was available for comparison. I remember that in a NPR story, Aldi is the one other marketer that has WalMart’s alarm bells ringing.
The one I’ve been to PROVIDES bags but only takes cash. There seems to be a lot of variation.
I’ve been to Aldi once. That was enough. Nothing I would buy (I actually read the labels to see what’s in things). I didn’t buy anything - and then was barricaded in by a checkout ‘girl’ (Ms Pollard) and security guard who seemed to have a problem with me walking out without handing over money.
If the German firms expected to be a levelling force, then they greatly underestimated the class forces at work. If people can be pigeon-holed as Waitrose vs. Tesco, then what chance Aldi?
I like Aldi’s. I stop in occasionally, and did so more often back when I was broker. But maybe, despite the OP’s claims, he doesn’t like “no-frills, no-nonsense commerce” as much as I do.
All those unknown brands are essentially Aldi’s store brands. (If you read the fine print, you’ll see Aldi’s name on them.) Like other store brands, the quality varies, from every bit as good as (and once in a great while better than) the name brand, to unacceptably inferior. There are some things you can get cheaper at a “regular” grocery store, at least if you buy things when they’re on sale and/or buy their store brands, but some things (e.g. bread and yogurt) are way cheaper at Aldi’s than anywhere else, and every bit as good.
And lately (within the past few years) Aldi’s has been offering some more expensive, upscale, interesting stuff, some of which I literally can’t get anywhere else.