We love us some Aldi. However, the produce can be hit and miss. A lot of the stuff cycles—if you saw something at Halloween last year, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll see it again. I remember something I found long ago, yogurt cheese. They had it for a long time and poof it was gone, hasn’t returned yet. Whatever you do, don’t forget the Aisle of Shame, tempting you with those things you never expect to find in a small market. As the meme says, “Went to Aldi for some bread, came out with a 2 man tent, chainsaw, and a trumpet.”
That’s where you find chainsaws!
Aldi’s Moser Roth chocolate bars (especially super dark 86%) are fantastic. And the individually wrapped mini-bars inside keep me from eating more than I should.
Other stuff is hit or miss for me, but that chocolate will always make me go back.
I’m a relative newbie to Aldi, my first visit was maybe 8 years ago. I’ve come to like it, mostly for unique items or super good deals (like the Bella Vie below) and less for general groceries. I don’t really buy produce, fresh meat, bread, basic commodities like dry pasta or rice at Aldi.
Here are a few items that I can vouch for:
Priano seafood pasta (limited time item but seems to show up with some regularity)
Priano pesto (Not outstanding but great value at about $2/jar)
Kirkwood ‘Red Bag’ chicken fillets (Enjoying a bit of a popularity boom right now, as I understand it)
Mama Cozzi take & bake pizza (Better than most frozen pizzas and pretty inexpensive for a large pie, too)
Bella Vie knockoff La Croix (I get the grapefruit scented. It’s $2.89/12 pack, about 60% the price of La Croix)
Kirkwood Mediterranean chicken burgers (I seldom buy frozen burgers but I got a tip. I just tried these for the first time a week ago, much better than I expected)
There’s an active Aldi subreddit that’s good to browse for new stuff and other intel:
Aldi
Yeah, that’s kind of the way I feel about them. Their “If you want X, then you’d better like the type of X we have.” method of stocking reduces costs in general, and is kind of the secret to the place. I could certainly feed myself by going only to Aldi, but I wouldn’t be eating precisely what I’d want to eat that week without making some of it from raw ingredients.
Fortunately, I have a wife that’s pickier than I am by a long shot (she has gobs of brand loyalty). So, she’ll happily make runs to different grocery stores each weekend to get what she wants, and I get to piggyback on her labor. Heck, even if I forget to put something on the list, she’ll often grab something just because she knows I like it. It’s like having a friggin’ food fairy, I can even be sure that she’ll locate reasonably obscure stuff on the list in a couple of weeks. Apparently all have to do is help unload the car and bake some bread (yeah, she’s a bread addict and I’m addicted to baking bread), and she’s happy with the arrangement.
I’ve become a huge fan over the last decade, and a new Aldi just opened that’s much easier for me to get to both summer (by bike) and winter (subway).
There are some items they just don’t carry (not sure why conical coffee filters is one of those), but I don’t think I’ve ever had anything from there that I didn’t like or found substandard. And the Moser Roth 72% chocolate stands up to pretty much any chocolate I’ve ever had from anywhere in the world.
Aldi produce used to be an invitation to a fruit fly infestation in my kitchen every time. They’ve gotten better about that although, like I mentioned earlier about stuff, it’s a coin flip if they’ll actually have what I want in the small produce section.
I realise I’m an outlier (here in the UK, people rave about Aldi), but I just don’t like the experience at all. I like grocery shopping, and feel it sucks all my enjoyment out of it. The range is limited, the stores are cramped, stuff is piled up and random, and they rush you through the tills and make you pack your stuff at the back of the shop. I’ve also had patchy success with their own brand goods and their (often lauded) cheap wine selection. I’ll pass.
I stand corrected!
Yeah. The produce is cheap, but it seems like it doesn’t last. Berries from Aldi’ go bad in the fridge over just 5 days; berries from the mainstream store down the street last 10 days.
It’s definitely a bargain-basement working-class scruffy experience. If that’s how you (any you) normally live, it feels pretty OK/normal. But if you normally shop higher on the hog, it’s off-putting. It wasn’t that many years ago that they began taking credit cards in the USA; used to be cash only. That felt real scruffy.
Ha, you’re right. If I could afford it, I’d do all my grocery shopping in Waitrose - think WholeFoods in a smart, department store environment, where products like artichoke hearts are in their ‘value’ range. (As it is, I temper my extravagance and go to Sainsbury’s).
I’ve noticed that newer Aldis are pretty nice inside. Not amazing but you don’t feel skeevy for being in them. And my local, formerly low-rent, Aldi was recently renovated to meet new standards.
The “no credit cards” thing didn’t bother me since they did take debit cards for a long while. In that respect, they were like Costco, saying that they were foregoing the credit card fees and passing the savings onto you.
I buy just a few things at Aldi - their spreadable butter is really good. It’s butter mixed with olive oil and sea salt. I always buy 2 or 3 when I go. I’m afraid they’ll disappear someday. I also love their Choceur chocolate bars. I always get the package of 5 rich dark chocolate mini bars. It’s one of the best dark chocolates. I find that I like the flavor of semi-sweet chocolate chips the best and these bars come the closest to chocolate chips. I hate dark chocolate that’s bitter. Other than those 2 items, I might pick up some produce, bread or chips.
Like has been said, both derive from the original German Aldi chain, and in large part, still stick to the basic concept of having predominantly house-brand ingredients and limited selection in order to drive costs down. They split in Germany decades ago into two separate companies with the same name, and each has independently moved into the US market, one as Trader Joe’s, and the other as Aldi.
Where they differ is that Trader Joe’s has moved into the gourmet/specialty grocery market and sells “foodie” type stuff, albeit house brand, and at a lower cost. So sort of a discount high-end store in a lot of ways.
Aldi, on the other hand, has decided to stick with the original concept even closer, and is aiming to be the lowest-cost grocery retailer, and is taking on the Wal-Marts and Krogers of the world by doing the same house-brand/limited selection trick, but in a more relentless way, and with a lot of penny-ante type cost saving stuff- absolutely minimal staffing, bag your own groceries, pay a 25 cent deposit on the cart so they don’t have to police the parking lot, packaging meant to speed checkout, etc… Like others have said, it can be off-putting, as can the general feel of the stores, which is often kind of scruffy and thrashed, with the merchandise presented still in the shipping boxes in a lot of cases. If you’re absolutely stuck on getting the absolute best price within a category, or it’s an occasional place to visit for weird and wonderful oddities that you can’t get elsewhere, then they’re a good choice. Otherwise, you may choose to pass.
Oooh yea the soft butter…
When my wife and I were first married, there was a brand-new Aldi just down the road. It was fantastic for us, and the staff was incredible. I have never seen retail employees work so hard. One guy in particular just made me happy to watch, given the skill with which he seamlessly switched from stocking to checkout to cleaning the floor as necessary and seemed to genuinely enjoy his job.
We were sad when we moved that there was no Aldi in our new location. My wife even wrote to the company and suggested they build one here. Then we discovered a small regional grocery chain that also has excellent employees (though not up to Aldi standards) and similarly low prices, but also has a much larger more traditional selection. So we don’t miss Aldi too much.
Around here, we also have Save-a-Lot, that has a similar business model to Aldi and thus similar price points… but the Save-a-Lot stores always seem to feel lower-class inside. Maybe it’s location, or maybe the handful of prestige items like the dark chocolate bars serve to elevate the whole store-- I’m not precisely sure.
We shop Aldi. We have shopped Save-a-Lot, but the quality isn’t as good as Aldi’s for the most part.
Yes, often there’s just one line. If it gets too long they pull someone else from stocking shelves.
One thing that many dislike about Aldi is bagging their own groceries. Actually, I prefer that. We bag while the checker rings it up and by the time we remove the credit card, we’re often ready to go. No waiting on someone to finish.
My hunch is that Aldi approaches this differently. If a piece of fruit is good for fourteen days after picking, the supermarket may get it from farm to wholesaler to retailer in 3 days. Aldi probably has some economical angle with bigger trucks or something and it takes them 8 days to get it on the shelf. So it’s usually “good” when you buy it but some of its useful life is gone.
It’s all about saving money but yeah, they just renovated lots of them.
Since nobody mentioned it upthread, one great thing is their return policy on a lot of their items (not including alcohol and some other things).