> Aldi is really quite bizarre, in a way the article tries to capture. For all their rock-bottom prices on store brand goods, whose quality ranges from pretty g

> Aldi is really quite bizarre, in a way the article tries to capture. For all their rock-bottom prices on store brand goods, whose quality ranges from pretty good to never-again mediocre, they stock the store with a rotating selection of random crap that fell off the boat, baiting the impulse for an aspirational or just-in-case buy That's a serious misunderstanding. Shitty electronics aside, their prices are not achieved by lowering quality, it just means that they very aggressively compete on price, while explicitly being worse in terms of brands, customer convenience and most importantly product diversity. A typical grocery store usually stocks tens of thousands of items. Aldi sells up to roughly a thousand different items, the vast majority being "fast movers" which are bought very often, like milk, eggs, bread, vegetables, toilet paper and so forth. Basically the opposite of an "aspirational or just-in-case buy". This vastly reduced product diversity immensely simplifies logistics and gives them a a very strong position in negotiations with producers. I really prefer shopping there. They do not try to pull off the usual tricks like having a big box of cereals which is actually more expensive than the smaller one. But the most important thing is that they are not trying very hard to make you buy a lot of shit you do not need.