Their quality has always been above budget level. In France, the quality was actually much better than the store-brand of other grocers. Supermarkets use diffe

Their quality has always been above budget level. In France, the quality was actually much better than the store-brand of other grocers. Supermarkets use different brand categories to price differentiate, while quality is not always changing quite as much. Furthermore, Aldi's low cost logistics allows them to be more efficient. So at a time, the average quality at Aldi was pretty much the same as Carrefour or Franprix in France, just less variance. And then there's always some items where Aldi's quality is simply better, even better than the quality brand. I distinctly remember that you could not buy decent cured salmon, even for like 6-7€ anywhere except Aldi, which had perfectly good cured salmon in two or three varieties for around 3€