No Aldi around here. A trip to Trader Joe’s is like a trip to Wal-Mart, don’t go there often, but they have things others don’t have. And at some of those things, they’re quite cheap/comparatively priced.
For example, if I want tortellini, Trader Joe’s is the cheapest place to get it around here. Kroger’s is double the price, and I was not able to find it at the closest WalMart.
What are some of the things that you buy that they don’t carry?
I do my 99% of my grocery shopping at TJs. It’s less expensive than the big chains, with higher quality, healthier (less preservatives/unnecessary fillers, etc.), and better tasting food. The only thing they don’t carry that I want is saltines.
As a side note: it never ceases to amaze me how much better healthier-looking and generally more attractive TJ shoppers are compared to shoppers at the big chain grocery stores. I would account for it (cynically) as the TJs shoppers being rich people who can afford professional trainers AND shopping at TJs… except that TJs is cheaper than any other grocery in town. I’ll never understand why more of “the proletariat” 
don’t shop there. My best guess is… 'cuz there’s no Little Debbie, Pepsi, Doritos, or Krispy Kreme. 
True. And for those of us who aren’t into health food store fare, but just want to eat a healthier (and more interesting) version of a normal diet, TJ’s makes it really easy.
Wow, Aldi’s must be cheap indeed! Because IME, TJ’s prices are pretty good - not Food Lion prices, but routinely cheaper than Giant and Safeway.
The nearest TJ’s to you is in Annapolis. Since I’d never heard of Aldi’s, I was surprised to find that it’s in Bowie, Lanham, Oxon Hill, and Brandywine.
It can be insanely cheap. And the chocolate is good, if a bit Germanic.
I get much better prices on meat and produce, as well as far greater variety, at the other couple of places we typically do grocery shopping. They are never the cheapest place to buy spices, and they don’t carry many of the ones we use regularly. I don’t recall seeing dried beans or other legumes there (just canned ones, and not a huge variety of those, either). We generally cook from scratch; TJ’s is great for convenience foods, but we don’t buy many of those.
Same here. I find TJ’s terrible for getting all my usual cooking staples, but fine for picking up a couple of convenience foods and maybe a specialty item or two. The prices aren’t bad at all, but I have a lot better selection of meat, fish, and veggies at my local supermarket than I do at TJ’s.
TJ’s is cheaper than Giant Eagle, OpalCat, and comparable to Marc’s. In fact, since TJ’s came to the Cleveland area I’ve noticed that Marc’s has stepped up their “gourmet” selections to mimic some of the things I used to buy only at TJ’s, like couscous and sun-dried tomatoes. Their cheese selection is amazingly well-priced…when I was searching for Gruyere a few years back, TJ’s was half the price per pound of the only other stores that carried Gruyere at the time. As was their couscous. Oh, they don’t have 17 varieties of couscous, but their olive oil is very well-priced, and they have a good selection of produce. Between Marc’s and TJ’s, I rarely buy anything at Giant Eagle anymore. I don’t find Aldi’s to have as good or as consistent a selection of produce, but for the basics they are just fine. I just don’t go there much.
A brand new Marc’s opened nearby in a newly built building, but within a month it was like every other Marc’s: it smelled funny, the floor was scuffed and stained, and all the stuff was caddy-whompus. How do they do that?
Aldi depresses me. I liked the prices, but it’s like shopping in some kind of prison camp. I felt like I should have been paying in cigarettes.
TJ’s has unbelievable prices on certain items, and it’s a fun place to shop as long as it isn’t too crowded. Their saffron is less than half of what I’ve ever seen saffron for anywhere else. And those chocolate-covered pretzels ar so good, they ought to be against the law.
I thought they were the same company. I also didn’t know Aldi existed in the US.
Looking on Wikipedia, I’m confused. The Trader Joe’s article Johnny L.A. quoted makes it sound like they are separate companies but with some ties in ownership. But the Aldi article is extremely confusing. The introduction to the article says that Aldi actually comprises two separate companies (Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud) operating in separate markets but “originally” owned and managed by same two people, brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht. It goes on to say that one of the brothers has retired and the other died, but says nothing about the current ownership of the company. It also says that
Here is the link from the footnote on Wiki’s Trader Joe’s article [emphasis mine]:
It’s a little more complicated than that, actually.
The Albrecht brothers that founded the Aldi chain were notoriously strange, reclusive, and downright weird. While I don’t believe the full details have ever came out, it’s my understanding that an irrevocable break in their relationship resulted in Aldi being split into two distinct entities (Aldi Nord/Süd.)
I’m assuming that the two stores while managed as totally separate entities had interlocking supplier agreements and things of that nature, because to my knowledge they offer the same products generally speaking (at least in areas where they operate in close geographic proximity.) The two brothers basically carved up market areas and agreed that each would manage their group within the boundaries of those areas, and they would not compete against one another.
Aldi Nord was Theo’s share of the divided empire, and he got a larger share of the German market (about 2500 stores vs 1600 stores for Aldi Süd), and most of the large countries in Western continental Europe.
His brother Karl got a smaller share of Germany, and didn’t get any of the big countries in continental Europe (Theo took Spain/France), but Karl got the U.K. and the U.S. markets. That’s probably part of the reason Karl and Theo’s wealth slowly diverged, with Karl becoming wealthier. When the split first happened Aldi’s presence in the U.S. was minimal and maybe even non-existent (meaning I think they may have split prior to Aldi even opening a store here.) But now with 1100 stores in the U.S. it is behind only Germany in number of stores.
Where Trader Joe’s comes in, is because of the division of markets the two groups (Nord/Sud) couldn’t compete directly in the United States. So Theo Albrecht purchased Trader Joe’s as a private individual (from TJ’s American founder), and operated it ostensibly so that he could tap into the American market. Since Trader Joe’s is infamously reclusive in its corporate affairs (mirroring the wealthy German billionaire that took it over as a small company and grew it to its present size) it’s really hard to say how much operational interaction there is with Aldi Nord (the company Theo ran.) It’s a privately owned enterprise so details about its operations are not going to be publicly available as they would be with a publicly traded company. Theo purchased TJ’s in 1979, right around the same time his brother was opening stores in the United States, and I’m sure back then since he was running Aldi Nord there was a lot of overlap between management decisions concerning Aldi Nord and TJ’s. Now that he’s dead (and before that he had retired to my understanding) it’s hard to say who has ultimate operational oversight. I guess whoever controls his trust, but there may be long standing institutional/organizational connections between Aldi Nord/TJs that persist to this day.
I’d chalk it up to the same factor that keeps the lumpenproletariat from stepping inside a Target store; the perception that prices are higher, and that the products sold are “too fancy” for their needs or tastes. TJ’s stores are often located in upscale lifestyle centers, and mostly in higher-income communities. Geography is also a factor; consider the TJ’s in the Cleveland area, located in Westlake and Woodmere, both in areas that are surrounded by miles of solidly upper-income neighborhoods. It’s a long way to TJ’s from Willowick and Newburgh Heights.
It’s the same phenomenon with the Tops and Wegmans supermarket chains in upstate New York. Prices at the two stores are roughly about the same, but blue-collar and over-60 shoppers prefer Tops, while Wegmans has a cult following among the professional crowd and younger shoppers.
The Aldi’s in my area are gross. I would barely buy canned goods there, let alone meat.
It’s been a few years since I tried, so I honestly don’t remember. I just remember being frustrated and having to stop at my regular grocery store on the way home for probably 1/3 of what was on my list.
They don’t have Giant Eagle in the Boston suburbs.
Giant Eagle is just a local/regionalsupermarket chain, like Hannaford, Big Y, or Stop & Shop in Massachusetts. It’s not a specialty grocer like Whole Foods, Fresh Market, Sprouts and similar chains.
I just wanted to say that in Germany, the Aldi stores (at least Aldi Nord) have an assortment of “Trader Joe’s” products, like nuts and dried fruit, and they actually sell them under that label. I assume that in the United States they want to keep the brands separate to hold up a certain image of Trader Joe’s, while in Germany they don’t have to worry about that (no Trader Joe’s stores here).
Interesting!
In Gemany, do people debate what is the better Aldi, Nord or Sud?
“Well, we in the north have the Trader Joe’s products at our Aldis, while you just have that Clancy’s sheisse in the south.”
Oh I know what they are–I used to live in Cleveland. I was assuming you somehow knew I lived in the Cleveland area and mistakenly thought I still lived there. I was just pointing out that they are no longer an option for me. What I’ve got available is Shaw’s (slightly more expensive but good selection and a reasonably pleasant shopping experience), Market Basket (lower prices, but frequent problems finding things and also always totally mobbed with people. It’s very hard to get through the aisles and the lines to check out are always really long, so it’s a pain in the ass to shop there. And in the end there are always 2 or 3 things I can’t find so I end up going to Shaw’s anyway) and Stop ‘n’ Shop (there isn’t one close to us so I almost never go there. They do have a cool system where you take a laser gun with you and scan things in as you put them in your cart, then just download the gun’s memory into a thing at checkout and pay without ever dealing with a person, and without having to scan everything through at a self-checkout lane.)
My impression is that they’ve kicked it up a notch over the last few years in terms of quality and selection. I’d consider giving them another shot.