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The race to the bottom in Germany has created a market where food is of good quality but not great. Larger supermarkets do have quite a bit of selection but it'

The race to the bottom in Germany has created a market where food is of good quality but not great. Larger supermarkets do have quite a bit of selection but it's not as good as the stuff you can get in a French or British store. You can get a fair selection of spices in stores other than Aldi or Lidl but sometimes I have the suspicion that it's only the third-class that is left after the stores in neighboring countries have bought their supply. In Germany Aldi is known as the hardest negotiator and the price setter for basic food. When they lowered the milk price by one fourth to 46 cents recently (which is way too low to cover production cost) all other chains responded within a few hours for their store-brands.

wirrbel 10y ago
I hear this quite often, but on the other hand I live about 20km away from the french border, and overall food quality does not go up much if you go there (with the obvious exceptions: Cheese, Baguette, Wine). Typically you can buy most items available in an Aldi store for the same price in other supermarkets (value brands).
nickpsecurity 10y ago
"When they lowered the milk price by one fourth to 46 cents recently (which is way too low to cover production cost) all other chains responded within a few hours for their store-brands." They tried this in my area maybe last year. Aldi dropped the price of milk and some other stuff to ridiculous prices. It went from around $2 to $0.60-0.70 at Aldi with Walmart, Kroger, etc following by dropping to $0.99. Aldi ships milk on racks with little else in their dairy selling that fast. Competitors, that I'm aware, all hand stock milk with tons of other products selling fast. Employees were exhausted from wave after wave hitting the milk section and so much milk stored that they couldnt get to other products. Convenience store owners were also posing as regular customers to buy basket loads of it over course of a day despite policy of 2 per customer. Results were so devastating to big players they backed off and didn't price war Aldi again in my area. So far. Milk went back up. I thought it was hilarious they'd even try given they're "as much overhead as possible" organizations going against an essentially "zero overhead" organization. What did they think would happen? Lol...

wirrbel 10y ago

I hear this quite often, but on the other hand I live about 20km away from the french border, and overall food quality does not go up much if you go there (with the obvious exceptions: Cheese, Baguette, Wine). Typically you can buy most items available in an Aldi store for the same price in other supermarkets (value brands).

nickpsecurity 10y ago

"When they lowered the milk price by one fourth to 46 cents recently (which is way too low to cover production cost) all other chains responded within a few hours for their store-brands." They tried this in my area maybe last year. Aldi dropped the price of milk and some other stuff to ridiculous prices. It went from around $2 to $0.60-0.70 at Aldi with Walmart, Kroger, etc following by dropping to $0.99. Aldi ships milk on racks with little else in their dairy selling that fast. Competitors, that I'm aware, all hand stock milk with tons of other products selling fast. Employees were exhausted from wave after wave hitting the milk section and so much milk stored that they couldnt get to other products. Convenience store owners were also posing as regular customers to buy basket loads of it over course of a day despite policy of 2 per customer. Results were so devastating to big players they backed off and didn't price war Aldi again in my area. So far. Milk went back up. I thought it was hilarious they'd even try given they're "as much overhead as possible" organizations going against an essentially "zero overhead" organization. What did they think would happen? Lol...