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I'm an industrial engineer and geek out about Aldi frequently. Here are a few things I've noticed (and researched) which differentiate them from others. -they

• hobofan 7y ago
  > depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts What's the alternative? Growing up in Germany I've literally never seen it any other way.
  • Youden 7y ago
    Usually there are return bays spread throughout the carpark where you can theoretically return trolleys/carts and they'll be taken back en-masse by a store employee later. Often this results in them being left all over the place or stolen though.
  • xvedejas 7y ago
    In the US I have never had to deposit any money to use a cart. I'm not sure how that would even work, is it some automated machine that spits out a cart?
    • Karunamon 7y ago
      It's similar to the "SmartECart" luggage cart kiosks you may have seen at airports. Sliding a cart in locks it in place on a set of rails, depositing the money releases a mechanical catch on the end, allowing you to pull one cart out.
      • theoh 7y ago
        You might be thinking of this system used by Ikea. https://youtu.be/JRXdlgBe8wg https://youtu.be/JRXdlgBe8wg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarte_Carte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarte_Carte looks like it might be the airport system you have in mind. The usual European shopping cart system works with a coin deposit, chains and mechanical locks on each cart, as described in several other comments.
    • pertymcpert 7y ago
      You insert a coin into a slot in the cart, and a chained key releases the cart from the next cart it's chained to. When you want your coin back, you return it to the line of carts, stack it and then insert the key from the next cart into yours. Your coin is released and the store doesn't have to pay someone to collect them.
    • detaro 7y ago
      They are linked by chains: every cart has a coin-operated lock accepting a chain and a chain for the next cart to connect. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Pfandschloss_bei_Aldi.jpg/800px-Pfandschloss_bei_Aldi.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Pf... Put a coin in the drawer and close it, the chain of the next cart pops out the back and you can take it. On return, you push the chain back in, the drawer pops open and you get your coin back. Store employees just occasionally balance cart numbers between the corrals, if there's multiple.
  • TallGuyShort 7y ago
    There are a few corrals throughout the parking lot where customers are expected to deposit their carts. The store then has someone who goes around from time to time to retrieve a row of them and push it back to the front of the store. It's often a job given to somebody mentally handicapped who can't do a lot of other things at the store.
    • burfog 7y ago
      Publix gives the job to the bagger/loader, who is usually a friendly person. This person bags your groceries, then offers to take them to your car and help you load them into your car. If you accept the help, then as they return back to the store they bring in the carts.
      • stjohnswarts 7y ago
        I never take them up on their offer, I would rather leave the service for the elderly, handicapped, or extremely pregnant women.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • someemptyspace 7y ago
    In the United States carts are free. You collect a cart at the entrance to the store, and return the cart to a cart corral in the parking lot next to your car. Then a worker from the store periodically goes out to the corral to collect the carts and return them to the store entrance.
    • osrec 7y ago
      Carts are free at Aldi too. You just put a coin in to release a cart, and when you return your cart, you get your coin back.
      • Cyph0n 7y ago
        They aren’t free if you don’t have a quarter on hand.
        • osrec 7y ago
          Well they aren't really for sale or rent either. Not sure what your point is?
          • bunderbunder 7y ago
            Maybe not intentionally, but it was a pretty good pun.
            • osrec 7y ago
              Pun? I missed it - ELI5 please!
              • bunderbunder 7y ago
                It takes a quarter to free one from its chain.
                • 7y ago
  • Jun8 7y ago
    In most supermarkets in the US you just leave your cart in the parking lot after you load up your trunk. They have people who then come and collect the carts.
    • stjohnswarts 7y ago
      No it's a common courtesy to put them in a coral or return them to the entrance (if it's a small lot). You aren't supposed just leave them in the parking lot just drift and bang into people's cars and block spaces. That's just lazy.
  • chodeboy 7y ago
    People leave there carts in the lots and workers collect them
    • rsynnott 7y ago
      Even in places with high employment and minimum wage?
      • adventured 7y ago
        Yes. Essentially every traditional Walmart and Target store in the US does it that way, regardless of high employment and minimum wage. Walmart as one example has a motorized cart mover. The employee collects and stacks the carts into a line, backed by the motorized unit, and then can just gently guide the whole flock of carts and it moves along with little human effort. It enables the employee to move dozens of carts at a time across the parking lot without very much physical risk of injury.
    • mac01021 7y ago
      In my experience, people leave their carts in the designated spot, mostly well nested. And a store clerk has to come out for about 5 minutes to bring them back every hour or so. I don't feel like that amount of labor is a tremendous cost for the supermarket.
      • wccrawford 7y ago
        I worked at at supermarket when I was young. Even when people left the carts in the best possible locations, it was still way more than 5 minutes per hour that we spent out there. Sometimes 2 of us would spent 10 minutes each per hour, but more likely one of us would be our there for 20-30 minutes per hour, especially during busy times. And that's when the cart collectors were being quick and not just out there fooling around. In addition, if things got busy inside and we forgot to collect carts for a while, we'd run out and customers would get upset that they didn't have a cart to use. This was especially likely during rain when no customers would return carts or bring carts on their way in.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • Torwald 7y ago
    The alternative, which was current when I was growing up in Germany, was to just have no such mechanism at all. People would just behave. This thing was introduced in France, because the French customers had another attitude to it and that got extrapolated by the huge French hipermarché concept.
  • lqet 7y ago
    Most of the IKEAs I have been to in Germany don't do this. They have a couple of poorly payed workers who do nothing else all day than collect carts from the parking space.
    • freeflight 7y ago
      Tho IKEA works on a different scale compared to most grocers in Germany, their stores are always extremely busy, particularly on Saturdays and they handle a lot bigger wares which means customers having a trolley, sometimes even multiple of them is a more regular occurrence. With that kind of throughput and the involved logistics of bigger pieces handed out on a trolley at the order counter, introducing the money deposit for the trolleys would massively slow down everything, possibly creating waiting lines at trolley stations as they sometimes happen during busy times at grocers. At least the employes collecting the carts have electrical little pushing cars, enabling them to push impressively long "snakes" of trolleys.
  • maxxxxx 7y ago
    Trader Joe's has a yellow line beyond which you are not supposed to take your cart. I was always wondering how this works so I pushed a cart behind the line. It immediately locked its wheels so it got stuck there. I guess some employee knows how to unlock these carts.
  • beatgammit 7y ago
    As others have said, in the US you leave it in the parking lot, hopefully in a cart return thing. Honestly, having to put a coin in to get a cart would mean I would likely never get a cart. I never pay with cash, and thus I never have coins with me, so I would be limited to whatever I could carry. This is obviously bad for business, so I think businesses just eat the cost of having an employee round up the carts. Then again, I hate seeing carts everywhere, and sometimes find myself returning a few because they're such a nuisance. If this solves the problem, I might consider leaving a coin in my wallet to shop at Aldi instead of my cart-ridden local grocery store.
    • ric2b 7y ago
      Most people in Europe have a coin in their car for this purpose (usually a plastic one that the supermarkets give out). You park and grab the coin before leaving the car, simple.
• antnisp 7y ago
  What's so weird is that all those sound rudimentary rather than innovative to my european ears.
  • notahacker 7y ago
    Yep. The most notable thing about Aldi (and similar competitor Lidl) from a UK perspective is that they pay above average for comparable supermarket jobs and reduce staffing accordingly. But I remember putting coins into slots for a trolley (and reclaiming them!) when I was young enough to be sitting in the child seat nearly 30 years ago, long before Aldi was a factor in the UK market. Is this really an innovative concept in the US? Are Americans going to be even more impressed when somebody over there invents the magnetic wheel clamps which discouraged taking trolleys back to our university campus? (even when comparatively poor we'd have happily sacrificed the coin...)
    • HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
      I've never seen it anywhere. I have heard of it, but in the two regions I've lived (Northeast and Midwest), never seen it. I wonder why it hasn't taken off. My son used to work at Walmart after school making around $15/hour to do little more than round up carts in the parking lot and bring them back into the building. Considering how cost conscious Walmart is, I'm surprised. However, Aldi is putting up a building across the street from my local Walmart, so we'll see what happens :-)
      • nashashmi 7y ago
        I saw this happen back in 1995. Back then people would leave carts just about anywhere in the parking lot. Then they introduced the concept of the quarter and having to return the cart to the stand. Soon enough it became a habit. And the practice continues till this day.
    • groby_b 7y ago
      You'd be surprised at what all counts as an "innovative" concept in the US. Coming over here from Europe as well, the country is 30-40 years backwards in many areas. (We do have wheel clamps, though ;)
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• PorterDuff 7y ago
  Do they have scales? One thing I've admired about Grocery Outlet is the lack of them.
  • chodeboy 7y ago
    Scales to weigh fruit/veg? No at leas not in Germany. The scales are built into the barcode scanner of the register. They only have scales so you can double check when you are shopping.
    • PorterDuff 7y ago
      Yes, but I mean not weighing things at all. All fruit/vegetables/meat are sold by the item or in fixed price bags and packages.
  • neolefty 7y ago
    The ones near me do have scales, in two places * Analog spring-based scales in the produce section, for customers to check weights before they buy * Precise scales at checkout, built into the scanner / register. However, most things are sold by package — only a few are sold by weight.
• NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  > -they combine varieties (like flavors of granola bars) of product in the same box. This greatly reduces the shelf space required. This is the only thing that fails about Aldi. Let's say you want their Chicken Tikka sauce. The mixed boxes mean good chance you won't see it as Tikka always goes first. You go through the whole 6 boxes of inventory, and yep, all sold - the three spaces in every box. Same for pizza - one always goes first. They don't restock until there's space for another combined box.
  • everyone 7y ago
    I wonder does that lead to a lot of waste? Eg. the 30% of the box thats the flavour that no-one (at this shop) buys, goes off and is dumped, for every box. Maybe the ratios are determined by their global sales, who knows. You would think that it would be advantageous for each shop to tweak its own ratios.
    • Symbiote 7y ago
      They would just reduce the price until it does sell. Also, packaged food like this typically last at least several months, if not a year or two.
    • FabHK 7y ago
      It doesn't get dumped, some customers just buy their second preference.
    • coldtea 7y ago
      >Eg. the 30% of the box thats the flavour that no-one (at this shop) buys, goes off and is dumped, for every box. They aren't stupid, if a product flavor regularly doesn't sell 30% of its inventory, they drop it and add more packets with the other flavors...
    • NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Good question - mostly I guess no as they sometimes seem intent not to refill until other levels drop too. Mostly this averages well enough. Yet for a few things - like tikka where ratios seem consistently wrong. As Britain's favourite curry, you'd expect a few extra jars of that in every box. Or Cumberland sausages up here in former Cumberland - just forget about whatever the other things in the box are. :) Probably means going the other way that when they drop something there's a chance 1 of the 2 or 3 actually sold well.
• MrsPeaches 7y ago
  > They can glance down and count how many of each, scan one, then hit the number pad for the quantity. I haven't seen the number pad used extensively at any other grocer. I spent a lot of time in Germany in the 90s. Aldi (and Lidl) hadn't switched to barcode scanners and the chashiers were still typing in product numbers by hand. I was always super impressed with the speed with which they typed and it certainly felt faster than the cumbersome bar code scanners found in the UK at the time.
  • troels 7y ago
    They stuck to it for a long time and the argument was indeed speed and to some extend ergonomics (the cashier doesn't need to lift up items). There is a system to it (100-199 is liquor, 400-499 dairy etc.), so it's fairly easy to memorise it.
    • V-2 7y ago
      Still used for fruit and veggies - at least a few years back, in England. Up to 100 codes to memorize, but some would come and go every week or so.
      • troels 7y ago
        Yeah, but for those they have a cheat sheet next to the register.
        • V-2 7y ago
          It's not practical to use them in the long run, you pretty much have to memorize them to be able to meet the company standards for till speed. And memorization is expected by the management. At least that was the case when I used to work at Aldi's (in the UK, quite a while ago).
  • jvagner 7y ago
    Do American Aldi grocery cashiers sit? That's what I noticed the most in German grocery stores. American cashiers stand, German cashiers sit.
• orthoxerox 7y ago
  TIL you can call American stores. Why do people do that?
  • jrowley 7y ago
    For example to check inventory/stock before going there.
    • Scoundreller 7y ago
      Even with online checks, I’ve had to call the store. Walmart always lists under 6 inventory counts as « low stock » with no guarantee. Since I was looking for a particular auto battery that never has more than a few units in stock, I had to call for them to check.
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    For other stores, generally to ask if a product is in stock. For a grocery store, all I can think of would be to ask if it's open.
    • metildaa 7y ago
      Calling is handy to ask what price an item is and whether it's in stock, or order something prepared by the deli or bakery that you want on a certain date/time.
  • kingkawn 7y ago
    To find out something about the store; hours, events, product availability, etc
  • asveikau 7y ago
    The only time I've done that in the current century is to confirm holiday hours when not made explicit on the web. eg. If it's New Year's, "are you open today, what time will you close?" If the store is clever they will leave a pre-recorded message announcing holiday hours.
  • 7y ago
• kodablah 7y ago
  As an admitted traditionalist concerned more about consumer comfort than company, some of these are the reason I don't and wont shop at Aldi. It's funny because depending on who you talk to, some of the same things that are seen as inconveniences to some are seen as beneficial to others. It's also funny to watch some of the same people laud inconveniences in one company and bemoan some of the same inconveniences in another.
  • llamataboot 7y ago
    I find it hard to shop at Aldi because of the almost brutal aesthetic. No signage, no colors, no nice lighting, just industrial meta shelves on an industrial floor with bare fluorescent lights overhead and everything jammed together. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. I will however still occasionally run in because although they run out quick almost every day, when they have grass-fed meat and some organic veggies, they are about twice as cheap as any other retailer around here has them for.
    • the_duke 7y ago
      I've wondered why they don't improve the aesthetics a little bit, it can't make that much of a difference to the bottom line. I think it's just part of the philosophy: you come because it's cheap and the quality is good for the price point, you buy, you leave. You don't get a experience, you get a utilitarian transaction. And that is reflected by the interior.
      • deleted 7y ago
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    • lostapathy 7y ago
      They are remodeling some stores - the one near me actually feels nicer than most traditional grocery stores in the area. Funny how things change.
    • pnathan 7y ago
      I've found that groceries run for and by immigrants have a similar approach. The "experience" Americans crave is revealed to be so vacuous.
• usr1106 7y ago
  > -they have barcode on 5 or 6 sides of their products, and they're typically huge! They nearly never need to orient a product to scan it. Their scan speed is far faster than any other supermarket I've been at. On a historical note (I am old enough to have shopped before bar codes existed): Generally stores had little price tags attached to every single item. Which was labour intensive twice: First someone has to attach the tag to each item and at the checkout it needs to be found somewhere on the product, read and the price to be entered into the cash register. With only 1000 products (back then, IIRC) and no weekly offers at all it took only 2-3 days for a new cashier to learn all prices by heart and easy for the store to skip the stickers altogether and just mark the price at the shelf. Typing prices without having to search for a tiny little sticker somewhere on the product was super fast and efficient compared to the competitors. Cashiers just dropped the product into the cart with one hand and typed with the other. Aldi introduced bar code scanners several years after the "full assortment" competition. At some point probably the better inventory book-keeping started to outweigh the costs. (Edit: clarified that Aldi had no price stickers at all)
  • frosted-flakes 7y ago
    There's a store called Bulk Barn here in Canada where cashiers still do this. Everything is sold in bulk (flour, nuts, candy, etc.) out of giant tubs with scoops, that customers use to fill clear, unlabelled bags. The cashiers have this spinning cylinder thing that lists all the prices, but I've never seen them use it. Instead, they plop each bag on the scale and type in the code, which takes two seconds each. I don't know how they tell the difference between all the generic powders that look the same, like white flour and rice flour, but they do. And if they don't, I suppose they just ask the customer.
    • Scoundreller 7y ago
      You’re supposed to write the bin code on the tag you use to close the bag!
      • frosted-flakes 7y ago
• draw_down 7y ago
  That’s nice... but how do you get help if you need to find something, or whatever else?
• xfitm3 7y ago
  I do like my plastic bags.
  • Skunkleton 7y ago
    You should stop that.
    • freehunter 7y ago
      Or at least bring last trip's plastic bags into the store with you.
      • skocznymroczny 7y ago
        Well, the problem with plastic bags is that when I need them, I usually don't have the last trip ones. If I prepare for my shopping, I don't take the plastic bags because I prefer my cloth bag.
      • xfitm3 7y ago
        I use them for garbage - I don’t have any left to reuse.
    • mrob 7y ago
      I assume you're vegan, you don't own a car, you never travel by airplane, you don't use heating or air conditioning, you only take cold showers, you wear your clothes until they're worn out beyond repair, etc. When somebody takes environmentalism that seriously, it might actually make sense to worry about a few grams of plastic.
      • maigret 7y ago
        Well: 1. Plastic bags often don’t really get destroyed, but get shipped to poor countries and land in the ocean. 2. Paper bags or boxes do the job as well, unless you are driving home your stuff through a long walk under rain or bike. But pedestrians and bikers usually have enough bag capacity with them. I’m only using plastic bags every couple months, because I know keep bags and boxes in my car trunk. Easy, 0 impact for me.
• microcolonel 7y ago
  My thought is that, although much of this is common sense, retailers have largely lost the will to live. They waste a lot of money on typical corporate money pits, but tend not to try improving the retail business itself. From what I gather in what people say, having only been to one Aldi before (so I don't really have enough experience to say much); I think Aldi has bucked the trend, and is trying to do a good job, and that is why they are succeeding. > depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts I've seen Americans remark specifically about shopping cart deposits a couple of times on Hacker News; I never thought there was anything special about it. I think the vast majority of retailers and grocers who offer shopping carts, in the three Canadian provinces I've lived in, use coin deposits for shopping carts. They still end up in rivers and alleyways on occasion, usually stolen by vagrants and hooligans, but the customers at least tend to comply.
  • Scoundreller 7y ago
    The coin thing is psychological. If you want to avoid carrying bags by hand, melt it for scrap, push your friends around, or get to your car 2 minutes faster, foregoing a quarter is great value. Unfortunately for them/me, if I’m coming by chance by bicycle, I usually don’t have a coin and reduce my shopping to the necessities without a cart. When you feel the weight of each item, you think more about every item you buy.
    • walshemj 7y ago
      Probably why they use a pound coin in the UK
    • resoluteteeth 7y ago
      I just wish Aldi also had baskets to make it easier when I bike there.
    • beatgammit 7y ago
      I don't have a coin ever because I never use cash. Requiring a coin deposit would just discourage me from getting a cart most days. If I regularly shopped there, maybe I'd consider putting one in my wallet or something to guarantee I have one, but I'd have to be sold on the place first. Requiring a coin is a hardship, especially in a plastic-oriented culture.
• deleted 7y ago
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• luckydata 7y ago
  the quarter trick is everywhere in Europe.
• lkbm 7y ago
  > I haven't seen the number pad used extensively at any other grocer. The thing I do see at HEB is they'll scan the same item n times when they see I have n of the same thing, so they do effect roughly the same efficiency. They might not as intelligently differentiate the packaging, though.
• bartread 7y ago
  -their conveyor belt is far longer than most stores. You should be able to get your entire cart worth of groceries on the conveyor at once. This minimizes the slowness of people handing one item at a time to the next checker. As others have pointed out, this isn't particularly innovative: this is the norm in large European supermarkets, regardless of brand.
  • adventured 7y ago
    It's normal for Walmart as well. You can easily fit a shopping cart of groceries on their conveyors. There's definitely nothing innovative about it.
• usaphp 7y ago
  > they have barcode on 5 or 6 sides of their products, and they're typically huge! They nearly never need to orient a product to scan it. Their scan speed is far faster than any other supermarket I've been at Scan speed is never a bottleneck of a checkout process. Packing and payment are. They might be saving millisecond on scan time, but the paper and printing of a label cost money too. Not sure if it’s the best showcase of efficiency here > depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts It also makes people not want to go there if they don’t have spare change. And if they go without a cart, they will definitely spend less
  • ppod 7y ago
    >It also makes people not want to go there if they don’t have spare change. I think it fits the philosophy. They aim at customers that have a mindset to go out and save. They are prepared. They're willing to work a bit to save money, but hope to compromise a bit less on quality.
  • froindt 7y ago
    > It also makes people not want to go there if they don’t have spare change. Aldi doesn't have a membership fee, but it has a culture and following akin to Costco or Trader Joe's. It works for some people, but not for others. The barrier to entry isn't that big, it's just a bit different. >Scan speed is never a bottleneck of a checkout process. Packing and payment are. They might be saving millisecond on scan time, but the paper and printing of a label cost money too. Not sure if it’s the best showcase of efficiency here I entirely disagree with this point in the context of grocery stores. Convenience stores I'm likely to agree because people typically buy a couple items and the payment time is effectively identical to that of a grocery store. I should look up metrics to see if it's tracked, but the scan speed makes a huge difference! They don't bag at Aldi at all, when they're checking out, the employee is pulling a cart around, scanning, or waiting for payment to process. I can pretty much guarantee they process more customers per hour and can complete more scans per minute than any other grocer in the US. The marginal cost of printing barcode is effectively 0. They are already printing the packaging and black and white are always on the color palette for the single barcode. One more item I forgot to list above is that they print their receipts one line at a time, so you never wait to have your 3 ft receipt printed after your payment is processed. They do a great job at eliminating the non-value added tasks in the entire store, cross training employees, and reducing overhead.
• davrosthedalek 7y ago
  Re barcodes, in Germany, in the beginning, the cashiers were trained enough that they could actually enter the UPC from memory faster than scanning the item. Later, they added the barcodes on all sides which increased the speed even more. The quarter in the cart thing is very common in Germany even at high end supermarkets. The higher overhead compared to the US makes it very hard to higher people for this kind of job -- the minimal gain in customer acquisition doesn't pay for it.
  • anticensor 7y ago
    Germany uses EAN-13, not UPC.
  • Odenwaelder 7y ago
    They didn't enter the barcodes from memory, they entered the price of the item from memory. That alone is a feat, though.
    • pgeorgi 7y ago
      Back then they had much less variation in inventory and very limited price groups: all products fit into the ~10 tiers they had, ranging from 0.19 to 3.99 or so. The increased variation in inventory and the scanners came at about the same time, and they only did that when they figured out how to keep their famous checkout speed. (and it's still slightly slower than it was back then)
      • ce4 7y ago
        Yep, during peak hours you feared Aldi checkout back then. When the queue was full the best cashiers would really stress you by observing you putting stuff onto the belt and already starting to enter prices ahead of them reaching their area (where now the scanner is). Half way through loading the stuff into the cart again the cashier would urge you to pay and the next customer's items started bumping into yours. It was very efficient and stressy, best you were two guys to share loading/unloading and paying (back then payment was only possible in cash). The scanners eased that a bit :)
• ekovarski 7y ago
  I believe they also source their own branded items from multiple vendors to avoid lock in. If one fails to deliver, they have another source. Keeps everyone one their toes at all times.
• DenisM 7y ago
  I wonder if one can pin a camera on the ceiling looking down at the conveyor belt, scanning all barcodes at once? Better than doing them manually one by one. If every box has barcodes on every side it should be possible for the software, knowing the size of the box, to get an idea if everything was scanned correctly or if an item had the barcode obscured. Maybe 2-3 cameras under different angles. Cameras are cheap, and recognition software scales well.
  • albertshin 7y ago
    Is checkout speed really limiting factor in grocery store growth though? Like are people that sensitive to the few extra minutes (at most) at the checkout counter they'll switch where they shop? I personally can't see myself switching from my local store even if it takes like 3 more minutes to check out. Maybe I'm just lucky though to think it's 3 minutes extra at most?...
    • burger_moon 7y ago
      > Is checkout speed really limiting factor in grocery store growth though? Like are people that sensitive to the few extra minutes (at most) at the checkout counter they'll switch where they shop? Have ever been inside a walmart? There's only ever like 2 checkouts open and massive lines, that's a long time to stand there. Waiting in line at the grocery store I thought was one of the most common annoyances people have?
    • njharman 7y ago
      I shop at 1am or later at 24 hr stores just avoid waiting. Life is finite. Not enough of it to waste in line.
    • bwilliams18 7y ago
      You don't speed up checkout because people care about faster checkout, you speed up checkout because people care about lower prices and faster checkout reduces fixed costs, or increases revenues allowing you to lower prices. If checkout lines are supply constrained (eg. there are always lines) then increasing speed increases throughput which increases revenues. If checkout lines aren't supply constrained (eg. there are empty checkout lines) then you can reduce the number of open lines without increasing wait times, reducing your headcount and driving down your labor costs. If you lower your labor costs you reduce your semi-variable costs and you can keep the same contribution margin and lower prices.
• tzs 7y ago
  > they combine varieties (like flavors of granola bars) of product in the same box. This greatly reduces the shelf space required. I don't understand how this reduces shelf space, but there are no Aldi stores anywhere near here (nearest is 804.18 miles away, according to their store locator) so maybe I'm not understanding what they are doing. All I've got for comparison are the variety packs that manufactures often sell at the stores we have here (Walmart, Safeway, etc). For example, if a bar comes in 3 flavors, and is sold in boxes of 6, a box takes up the same space if it has 2 of each flavor or 6 of one flavor.
  • aembleton 7y ago
    The box they are talking about is the box that comes from the factory. By mixing all of the flavours you only need the shelf space of one box. They place more boxes behind that one. If they needed one for each flavour, then they would need three boxes, side by side taking up three times as much space.
• lugg 7y ago
  This sounds a lot closer to Pak'n'Save of New Zealand than the Aldi's we have in Australia. Seems like they might have quite a lot of variation on locality. Ive noticed this in the small too, some suburbs have much better Aldi's than others when it comes to selection.
• ddebernardy 7y ago
  You forgot another important bit: the pickup area after their conveyor belt is one of the shortest out there, which forces customers to pack in a hurry so as to keep up with how fast the cashier is going. Speaking for myself, it's the part that annoys me most when I shop at one. I get why they designed their POS it, but it's just obnoxious for the elderly and for parents with by small children. It would seem simple enough to solve, too: just add two such areas.
  • eredengrin 7y ago
    I've been to quite a few Aldis and the flow in all of them is that the items get scanned and immediately placed in a cart, then there's a separate bagging area (a large counter along the wall near the exit door, a couple feet across from the cashier section) to actually move the items from your cart into your bags however you please. Are there Aldi stores which don't work like this? I can't imagine trying to bag fast enough to keep up with the cashiers...
    • DominikPeters 7y ago
      In all countries I've seen, except the U.S., Aldi cashiers move items into a small buffer area, and the customer then transfers them back into their cart, in sync with the cashier. In some non-German countries (e.g. UK), customers often don't cooperate or are slower than the cashier, which reduces efficiency. The U.S. system is different, where the cashier directly pushes items into the cart, and also there seems to be a weird cart-switch going on, where you get the cart of the person who used to be in front of you. My guess is that Aldi couldn't educate U.S. customers that they have to work in sync with the cashier, and then they came up with this solution. U.S. checkout shape: https://www.trbimg.com/img-589b8178/turbine/ct-aldi-expansion-remodeling-0209-biz-20170208 https://www.trbimg.com/img-589b8178/turbine/ct-aldi-expansio... Non-U.S. checkouts: https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/gallery/media/852/15994-detailp.jpeg https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/gallery/media/852/15994-... http://www.wochenanzeiger-muenchen.de/media/archive/wsp/5634/aldi-haar_kasse.jpg http://www.wochenanzeiger-muenchen.de/media/archive/wsp/5634...
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
• em-bee 7y ago
  decades ago there was a story, how the shelves at aldi looked cheaper, but where actually more expensive, and just gave the impression of looking cheap. in hindsight, i now think that while true, those shelves are probably also more efficient to use (allowing them to put up products in their boxes, hold more weight, etc) aldi was also selling products for less than what they paid for. this is common practice in some places but in germany it's actually illegal, and they had to stop that.
• eredengrin 7y ago
  One other thing you didn't mention is that they don't accept credit cards. Debit or cash only, to avoid the extra fees. Although I've heard this may have changed recently, but at least for a while all the ones I went to never accepted credit cards (now I sadly don't live near one).
• blotter_paper 7y ago
  >depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts Years ago when I read the bit in Freakonomics about the daycare that instituted an additional charge for picking kids up late to discourage the practice but found that the rate of late pickups increased instead because parents felt like they were paying for the service of extra daycare thus alleviating the guilt, I immediately thought of Aldi carts. Do Aldi carts get stolen more per use than Price Cutter carts because people have to pay a quarter for them? I know that's both not what the quarter is for and not what it is attempting to discourage, and I'm not claiming it necessarily does have this effect... I just wonder if people can somehow rationalise taking carts easier when they have to pay something for it.
  • Maxion 7y ago
    Virtually all grocery stores in Finland works with this principle. Coin for a cart. It works remarkably well, people want their coins back.
    • seszett 7y ago
      It's a whole euro though, so maybe it's high enough that it has more effect than a quarter dollar. Though not all stores have a deposit for carts, Colruyt in Belgium doesn't for example, and I don't see carts lying around.
    • blotter_paper 7y ago
      I've seen it work! If I hadn't, I might question it. My comment wasn't wondering whether there are more carts left in the parking lot of an Aldi or a Price Cutter, it was wondering if more carts get taken off property entirely and used for other purposes. If that's your goal, a quarter is pretty negligible. Years ago I worked at motel near an Aldi and a WalMart, and saw a good number of both companies' carts left in the parking lot. More WalMart carts, for sure, but they also get more traffic. I used Price Cutter as an example instead of WalMart because I think some people have a special hatred for that particular company that might make stealing from a WalMart easier to rationalise for other reasons (I'm not making a value judgement about that, just stating it as something I've anecdotally observed). Efit: s/anf/and
• hannob 7y ago
  I feel quite a few of those things are pretty standard in Europe, so I wonder if ALDI is just exporting european practices to the US. "Coin for a cart" e.g. is almost normal. I noticed that barcodes on all sides of a product is becoming more common, particularly in stores that allow self-scan (ALDI doesn't, but it obviously makes things easier also for customers that self-scan).
  • jaabe 7y ago
    That was my thought as well. I live in Denmark, I think ALDI is one of our least efficient supermarket chains which is why they’ve had to fill the niche of low-quality-low-price. I never knew American supermarkets were so terrible. I mean, you read about the Amazon grocery stores and get the picture of Europe being far behind.
    • iforgotpassword 7y ago
      I think ALDI being low quality is mostly a myth, just assumed because of their low prices. The only thing I don't but there is meat, greatly prefer the local butcher.
      • glenndebacker 7y ago
        In some cases the cheaper Aldi products is the same as the more expensive product from another store. When I was younger there was no difference between olé’s chocolate and Leo with the exception of the package. It was the same taste and factory producing them.
        • chrisan 7y ago
          If you have a thing for Girl Scout cookies, the Aldi generics taste just the same for a fraction of the price
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
• davej 7y ago
  A couple of things I've noticed here at Aldi in Ireland. Particularly interested in the psychological aspects: - The packing area (after the till) is quite small. This means that if you're not packing quickly and putting items back into the trolley then the till operator will have to stop scanning because of the backlog. They will often make subtle eye-contact (with a smile) when they have to stop, this puts the shopper under pressure to pack quicker. I'm a fast packer so it doesn't affect me but I've seen it with other people. - The till operator will ask you "Cash or Card" before you have finished packing. Another nudge to hurry you on to the next stage. - They will open a new till the second the queue goes beyond the edge of the conveyor belt. Often they will open up the till for just one customer and then close it again as the queues have subsided. I've seen a large variance in this though, some Aldi's are lazer-like, others are more laid-back.
  • fjfaase 7y ago
    This is not the case in my home town, Enschede, less than 5 miles from the German border in The Netherlands. The lines are terribly slow there compared to other supermarkets. I usually spend more than half of my time waiting in the line. (I only go to Aldi for a few products they carry.) There are more and more shops where you do the check-out yourself either at a scan station or with a hand-held scanner. I guess in the Netherlands the price/efficency difference between the various supermarket chains is less.
  • V-2 7y ago
    This is not the packing area though. In Aldis you are generally not expected to pack at the till at all. What should be happening is that you put all your shopping right back into the trolley, then take it away and bag your stuff at your pace at the window ledge, getting out of the way of next shoppers. I don't know about Ireland, but in the UK there's been obviously some backlash from the customers who aren't used to this model. I've seen arguments break out.
    • davej 7y ago
      > This is not the packing area though. Yeah but if you pack fast enough and have your bags already open on the trolley then you can it done at the till.
• edvald 7y ago
  Here's a fun fact to add to the mix: Aldi's gin is one of the best in the world, and cheap to boot. And they're pretty good at various other spirits and beverages too. Do they carry those in the US? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/aldi-gin-best-world-spirit-10-cost-cheap-international-wine-spirits-competitions-awards-a7864211.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/aldi...
• ClassyJacket 7y ago
  Also they let the cashiers sit down, which means they get less tired and are therefore more productive. I can't imagine how much less productive I'd be if I could never sit down at work. The only reason I can think that Coles\Woolworths\etc\other supermarkets don't do this is that they straight up enjoy being cruel.
  • bonoboTP 7y ago
    All cashiers sit in Europe, at least in the countries I've seen. But there were quite some scandals of how Lidl (not Aldi) handles toilet breaks and humiliates women cashiers on their period by having them wear bracelets so the manager knows they are allowed a little more toilet breaks.
  • krapp 7y ago
    >I can't imagine how much less productive I'd be if I could never sit down at work. This is the rule for FC employees at Amazon - you can squat, or kneel, but never sit. They say it's a safety issue, but I suspect they really just consider pain to be a more effective motivator than comfort.
• nswest23 7y ago
  I've never successfully purchased anything at aldi. Generally what happens is I'll walk in, grab what I want, proceed to the checkout, notice that there's only one register with at least 10 people in line and I'll drop whatever it is I went in to get and leave. I can't be bothered to wait that long to save 14 cents on eggs. On the other hand my wife goes there somewhat frequently and is able to buy things in a reasonable amount of time so maybe it's just me.
  • tdb7893 7y ago
    I'm my experience if there's a long line of people like that they are great about opening another line. I've had that experience at multiple Aldi stores so maybe yours was just understaffed or something.
  • aembleton 7y ago
    Didn't you save time on finding the eggs? I shop at Aldi and Lidl, not for the low prices but for the convenience of getting what I want and getting out quickly.
• Waterluvian 7y ago
  So much of that is standard in Ontario (or all of Canada, I don't know). I hate coins for carts. I don't carry currency. Now I have to carry coins. Also they're irritating to handle while also handling my kids. Finally, they make me feel untrusted. Because some classless people walk home with carts and dump them in a ditch, I'm no-longer trusted not to do the same.
• test6554 7y ago
  And yet I will never shop there again. Quality of meat, produce and snacks are very poor. They are great at what they do, but they do nothing I want.