6 ms·

Aldi: Culture and Operations of a Hard Discounter (2023)

91 points by alexzeitler 3y ago

dumbfounder 3y ago
Aldi brand items are very similar to human food.
- brettermeier 3y ago
  Is it so bad in the US? In germany their food is often quite nice, compared to other discounters. (This is a personal opinion, but has also been claimed in some television reports where, for example, various ice creams etc. were tested.)
  - gen3 3y ago
    It’s not bad here. Some aldi brand items aren’t as good (such as their cheez-it), but generally everything is of good quality. I think the only thing you can complain of is that the US stores are smaller and offer less (ex no in house bakery)
    - kipchak 3y ago
      I think the problem with their cheez-its is that they are knockoff cheese-nips instead.
      - brettermeier 3y ago
        Some knock-off products aren't as good as the originals, that's also a "problem" here, but the discounters do this with almost every well-known product and the quality is usually okay.
  - unregistereddev 3y ago
    If you are buying staple goods, Aldi quality is quite nice. For some luxuries (fancy cheese, chocolates) their quality is very good, especially for a discounter. If you only want to buy processed food and meal kits that require minimal cooking, then Aldi has subpar quality. Many of the prepackaged meal kits and processed foods are notably lower quality than what you find in other grocery stores.
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      The chocolate bars are an astonishing value. The two big online video advertisers I noticed in December were Amazon and Aldi, but the ads could not be more different. Amazon's ads were irrelevant to the brand, they were just showing stories that people were supposed to react emotionally to. (And they never said that the guy at the Llama farm is paying the same for prime as people who get same day shipping except he gets five day shipping.) Aldi on the other hand was really clear about why Aldi was different from other retailers and were a lot more compelling to me. (I did buy from Aldi in December, I didn't buy anything from Amazon.)
    - dumbfounder 3y ago
      I ordered from Aldi for the last time yesterday. The cheese was flavorless, I ordered 3 kinds. The kids reject the Nutella substitute. Their cereal is made from 70% cardboard. Produce is good but all Aldi brand stuff that I have had is trash.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Their cuts of meat are often sub-par, especially the beef. Otherwise, the quality of their goods is pretty high.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jasperry 3y ago
I've come to appreciate Aldi; my wife's nose for bargains has helped me see that they hit a sweet spot of lowest price/sufficient quality for many items. However, their days of being genuinely cheaper than other options may be numbered, as the market balances out. I see the new stores in my part of the US trying to emit a more upscale vibe, and I've seen instances of individual items being sold at much higher prices than you can get them at in bulk at Costco.
- pintxo 3y ago
  It might be the mid term effect of the original founders having left the show (they died) and the next Generation being less stringent in their business strategies.
- this_user 3y ago
  They have been doing the same in Germany over time. Their stores used to be a lot more cramped and dingy, but other discounters like Lidl eventually started upping their game in an attempt to poach some of Aldi's market share. This led to several rounds of ugprades over the last 15-20 years. The result are stores that look much more upscale, and they are selling more brand-name and generally higher quality items than before while still offering the same cheap staples. But they seem to have compensated by increasing their operational efficiency. For instance, nowadays all of their staff are wearing headsets for radio communication, which was not the case a decade ago or so. So I wouldn't want to bet against their ability to keep prices low. They are essentially to brick and mortar retail what Amazon is to e-commerce in terms of optimising their operations to the last detail.
mdip 3y ago
I absolutely love Aldi -- they do several big and subtle (with big results) things that other retailers fail on: (1) Their store brands are consistently on-par or better than the name brands. It's no "Kirkland Signature" but I've found short of about three things, I like the Aldi product better[0]. (2) Their prices are good enough that I don't have to plan with coupons/nonsense. I analyzed this a few years ago (so long ago that newspaper coupons were still the only "real" coupons offered by food vendors) and found it was worth the time savings to skip the chore and just go to Aldi. (3) Their "Aisle of Shame" (close-out random goods) is fun. I frequently find excellent products at ridiculous prices ($30 off-brand blender worked longer than the $200 I replaced it with). (4) Their near-frustration free check-out. Honestly #4 is the reason. Their check-out staff will rip through a cart faster than you can unload the groceries. They can do this because Aldi ensures their store branded products have barcode labels that extend the length of the box and appear on nearly every surface[1] (and they minimize the movements required of their staff to perform that job). You can have 4 people with full carts in front of you and they're cleared out before a typical Walmart scanner handles one half-full cart. When I saw they introduced self-checkout, my heart sunk, but I used it. I think it's the only automated check-out system I've used that works. You get that product anywhere near the laser and it scans. It's amazing how much of that process comes down to the barcode scanner working properly. [0] In one case -- their Mocha iced coffee -- I can't drink other brands any longer [1] In some cases they slap a barcode on non-store branded products.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  Recently, Aldi has started TV brand advertising here in PA, one of their biggest US markets. I was actually shocked by how incredibly core to the store moral their ads are - they literally brag about their smaller sku count, small stores, no cart pushers, and no loyalty cards. The tag line is 'Because, everything we don't do, is for you.'. Here is the over the top holiday ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWqmctnWa8&ab_channel=ALDIUSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWqmctnWa8&ab_channel=ALDIU... The newer non-holiday ads are more direct to the point on the checkout efficiency. If I didn't know better, I would say they were working with TBWA\Chiat\Day or re-incarnated steve jobs to run their ad campaign. Edit: It is a Leo Burnett Campaign.
jancsika 3y ago
Aldi consistently sells avocados for 60% less than the discounted avocado at the big chains. And this is in an area where avocados aren't grown. How are they able to do this across so many food categories? The interview doesn't answer this question.
- s_dev 3y ago
  By having a really low range of inventory and really high turnover of that inventory so they focus on bulk buying only a few items. Walmart sells everything and there is a cost in supporting being a one stop shop. In Aldi it's typical to have 1 type of smoked back bacon for example while Walmart might have 10 types of smoked back bacon.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  They try to cut out as many layers of middlemen as possible, and then act as a reliable partner (they pay in full, on time, every single time and never make a supplier refund them for unsold product). In the case of your avocados, they're probably buying them directly from the farmer: > When you partner with ALDI you can expect simplified processes that give you more time to invest in your business, while receiving high-volume, timely orders that allow you to plan ahead. > Prefer to work directly with manufacturers or growers [1] [1] https://corporate.aldi.us/suppliers/become-a-supplier/ https://corporate.aldi.us/suppliers/become-a-supplier/
feverzsj 3y ago
Their own chocolate brands are probably the best ones among supermarkets, and it's dramatically cheap.
baxtr 3y ago
Fascinating: > The first thing that struck me was an absolutely rock-solid commitment to gaining the trust of the customer, the employees, the suppliers and business partners. Almost every rule or method or procedure of the company was built around ensuring that. To be frank, I hadn’t seen something like that before. Yes, looking after your customers is a standard prerequisite for a good retail company, so that wasn’t so different or difficult to understand. But really looking after your employees, that was something new to me. For example, having a mantra that says, let’s pay our people as much as we possibly can. I had been involved in the complete opposite before. What do we need to pay; don’t pay a cent more, would probably be the mantra of most of the other business conversations that I had been involved in.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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joezydeco 3y ago
I'm blown away by the floor tile. The interview goes off on a side thread there but is a perfect example of long-term thinking on Albrecht's part. The fact that they also don't trust American crews to install this floor properly is pretty interesting, too.
- Duanemclemore 3y ago
  As an architect this part made me happy. The way we build is an expression of our values and I think this sums up the Aldi way perfectly.
  - joezydeco 3y ago
    A quick web search found a few PDFs from various construction firms that deal with Aldi. Every single guide has some verbiage in there saying "prep the floor in the following manner, then step aside when the German tile subcontractors show up"
- troupo 3y ago
  It's the Sam Vimes boots theory in practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory --- start quote --- The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. --- end quote ---
  - joezydeco 3y ago
    From my experience with German friends and family, this philosophy is extremely ingrained in their culture. They don't understand disposable Walmart-style products and will proudly pay more for quality items that last multiple times longer than their dollar-store counterparts.
drewg123 3y ago
Do they still require a quarter deposit on shopping carts? One opened in the US city where I lived ~15-20 years ago, and they required a coin deposit to use a shopping cart. I don't cary change (not even back then), and requiring a deposit on a cart is the mark of a bad neighborhood. So I just left, and have never returned to an Aldi.
- kipchak 3y ago
  Yes, though you can ask a cashier for a quarter, at least at the stores I've been to. Feels ore satisfying than it probably should to get an occasional quarter or two for bringing stranded carts back on the way in also.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    Candy money for kids !
- edmccard 3y ago
  A coin deposit is no more a mark of a bad neighborhood than having cart corrals in the parking lot -- like them, it is a way of reducing (or trying to eliminate) the amount of time employees have to spend collecting carts and returning them.
  - drewg123 3y ago
    A coin deposit is a signal that either the carts are being stolen, or that they are not being returned to the cart corral. Both are signs of a bad neighborhood in my area of the country.
    - oldandboring 3y ago
      This is a true statement, but I suspect the underlying goal is to reduce overhead and pass the savings on to the consumer and/or the bottom line. This is because if carts are stolen they must be replaced, and if they are not returned to the corral a worker must be paid to do it.
Duanemclemore 3y ago
Great read. We just got an Aldi in my small southern college town a year or so ago. But we had one in my home town in the rural midwest since the late eighties, and because of that one they always popped out of the noise of suburban sprawl to me. So I've been to many across poorer, solidly (US) middle class, and relatively affluent areas. The new one gave me the opportunity to watch something develop. This is anecdotal, so I may be off base and observing something artificial... but here goes. If you go to the one in my very blue collar home town to this day, the product line is dominated by the low-cost, no-frills value items. Stack 'em deep and sell 'em cheap bulk snacks and the like. They might even have a double aisle of shame. After my early experience with this one I went to others in nicer areas and the product line was very, very different - all the charcuterie items and whatnot. Well, the new one here started with a really even mix of the low and high end products. As the location gained more popularity, the nicer items started to take shelf space away from the lower end stuff. So - I could be seeing things, but I think Aldi has a kind of regional (or national?) stock balancing system where they make the most of their smaller footprint by analyzing sales trends for a particular location and stock it with the items that will sell there. Anyway, the new one here is visibly taking market share from the national chain supermarket a couple blocks away where people usually have to go for premium items. I'm really glad it's here. It's ... halved? my grocery bill.
AlbertCory 3y ago
Aldi's relationship to Trader Joe's in the US: https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-and-trader-joes-are-they-the-same-company/ https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-and-trader-joes-are-they-t... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-joes-the-connection-to-aldi-will-surprise-you/ar-AA1cMPaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-jo...
- Semaphor 3y ago
  For the lazy (and from memory): there's Aldi South and North in Germany (original brothers kinda divided Germany). North bought Trader Joe's ages ago. Aldi South came too the US as Aldi. Iirc North is mostly Europe only as Aldi. From what I've heard, Aldi South is slightly fancier, but I've never been in one.
  - anotheruser13 3y ago
    The split between Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd came about when the brothers had a difference of opinion over selling cigarettes.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      I don't think TJ's sells cigarettes, FWIW. But from what I've heard, they're hands-off with TJ anyway.
topkai22 3y ago
Worth mentioning that Aldi has owned Trader Joe's since 1979. I have barely been to Aldi's, but it seems like they have similar products if a bit different themes.
- adwi 3y ago
  From someone's link above: > Therefore, if you hear that Aldi and Trader Joe’s are owned by the same group in the United States, you can tell them the truth. While there is a connection between the ownership groups of Theo and Karl Albrecht, they are separate ownership groups that run very different stores that are only connected by the Aldi name. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-joes-the-connection-to-aldi-will-surprise-you/ar-AA1cMPaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-jo...
dopylitty 3y ago
If you’re interested in grocery stores check out The Secret Life of Groceries[0]. It’s a book that goes into the history of grocery stores in the US along with how the modern supply chain works from sourcing to production to delivery to selling. It also covers how Trader Joe’s and Aldi differed historically and the process that led to Aldi buying Trader Joe’s. 0:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253715/the-secret-life-of-groceries-by-benjamin-lorr/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253715/the-secret-l...
oftenwrong 3y ago
>There were these myths or legends in the business, which I didn’t, personally, experience, but I knew about them and I could tell you 50 stories like that. I wish I could hear more of them. Someone should write them all down.
soniman 3y ago
If you want to listen https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/in-practise/aldi-culture-operations-of-a-il6IxwDnacV/ https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/in-practise/aldi-cultur...
jsdwarf 3y ago
Aldi pays top salaries, but also expects top performance. An adage goes that they pay you 1.3x the salary of a normal store employee, but expect the performance of 3 employees;-) They were know for doing cashier drills in the pre-barcode age: you had to sum up a shopping cart filled with certain products and report the sum plus time needed. Even now cash desk time per customer is measured - with crazy outcomes, e.g. AlDi cashiers putting groceries in the shopping bag for elderly people so that the dont block the queue too long.
- eliaspro 3y ago
  An ALDI in the region introduced something, that was unheard of them before. Until now, there was never an area after the cashier to collect & bag your stuff, but instead there was a place to park your shopping cart, so the cashier could toss all of your goods right into it, clearing the area as fast as possible to process the next customer. But now, an ALDI here introduced the collect & bag area with a split - just like many other super markets, so one customer can pack its stuff while the other is already getting its groceries processed. But all this with a twist: there's a separate payment terminal for each collection area, so the payment of the first customer doesn't block the cashier and the register from handling the next one.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    I was quite astonished and impressed (as I thought about it) the first time I saw two fricken payment terminals at one cash register (Aldi Süd, Germany). Around COVID time, people started to pay more often by card, and someone at Aldi realized pretty quickly how they could use that to improve efficiency. There are obviously some ugly failure cases, but they don't pay those high salaries to get dummies who couldn't handle that.
slyall 3y ago
Another Interview with the same guy on the same site Aldi: Hard Discounter Business Models https://inpractise.com/articles/Aldi-hard-discounters-paul-foley https://inpractise.com/articles/Aldi-hard-discounters-paul-f...

91 points by alexzeitler 3y ago

dumbfounder 3y ago

Aldi brand items are very similar to human food.

brettermeier 3y ago
Is it so bad in the US? In germany their food is often quite nice, compared to other discounters. (This is a personal opinion, but has also been claimed in some television reports where, for example, various ice creams etc. were tested.)
- gen3 3y ago
  It’s not bad here. Some aldi brand items aren’t as good (such as their cheez-it), but generally everything is of good quality. I think the only thing you can complain of is that the US stores are smaller and offer less (ex no in house bakery)
  - kipchak 3y ago
    I think the problem with their cheez-its is that they are knockoff cheese-nips instead.
    - brettermeier 3y ago
      Some knock-off products aren't as good as the originals, that's also a "problem" here, but the discounters do this with almost every well-known product and the quality is usually okay.
- unregistereddev 3y ago
  If you are buying staple goods, Aldi quality is quite nice. For some luxuries (fancy cheese, chocolates) their quality is very good, especially for a discounter. If you only want to buy processed food and meal kits that require minimal cooking, then Aldi has subpar quality. Many of the prepackaged meal kits and processed foods are notably lower quality than what you find in other grocery stores.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    The chocolate bars are an astonishing value. The two big online video advertisers I noticed in December were Amazon and Aldi, but the ads could not be more different. Amazon's ads were irrelevant to the brand, they were just showing stories that people were supposed to react emotionally to. (And they never said that the guy at the Llama farm is paying the same for prime as people who get same day shipping except he gets five day shipping.) Aldi on the other hand was really clear about why Aldi was different from other retailers and were a lot more compelling to me. (I did buy from Aldi in December, I didn't buy anything from Amazon.)
  - dumbfounder 3y ago
    I ordered from Aldi for the last time yesterday. The cheese was flavorless, I ordered 3 kinds. The kids reject the Nutella substitute. Their cereal is made from 70% cardboard. Produce is good but all Aldi brand stuff that I have had is trash.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Their cuts of meat are often sub-par, especially the beef. Otherwise, the quality of their goods is pretty high.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jasperry 3y ago

I've come to appreciate Aldi; my wife's nose for bargains has helped me see that they hit a sweet spot of lowest price/sufficient quality for many items. However, their days of being genuinely cheaper than other options may be numbered, as the market balances out. I see the new stores in my part of the US trying to emit a more upscale vibe, and I've seen instances of individual items being sold at much higher prices than you can get them at in bulk at Costco.

pintxo 3y ago
It might be the mid term effect of the original founders having left the show (they died) and the next Generation being less stringent in their business strategies.
this_user 3y ago
They have been doing the same in Germany over time. Their stores used to be a lot more cramped and dingy, but other discounters like Lidl eventually started upping their game in an attempt to poach some of Aldi's market share. This led to several rounds of ugprades over the last 15-20 years. The result are stores that look much more upscale, and they are selling more brand-name and generally higher quality items than before while still offering the same cheap staples. But they seem to have compensated by increasing their operational efficiency. For instance, nowadays all of their staff are wearing headsets for radio communication, which was not the case a decade ago or so. So I wouldn't want to bet against their ability to keep prices low. They are essentially to brick and mortar retail what Amazon is to e-commerce in terms of optimising their operations to the last detail.

mdip 3y ago

I absolutely love Aldi -- they do several big and subtle (with big results) things that other retailers fail on: (1) Their store brands are consistently on-par or better than the name brands. It's no "Kirkland Signature" but I've found short of about three things, I like the Aldi product better[0]. (2) Their prices are good enough that I don't have to plan with coupons/nonsense. I analyzed this a few years ago (so long ago that newspaper coupons were still the only "real" coupons offered by food vendors) and found it was worth the time savings to skip the chore and just go to Aldi. (3) Their "Aisle of Shame" (close-out random goods) is fun. I frequently find excellent products at ridiculous prices ($30 off-brand blender worked longer than the $200 I replaced it with). (4) Their near-frustration free check-out. Honestly #4 is the reason. Their check-out staff will rip through a cart faster than you can unload the groceries. They can do this because Aldi ensures their store branded products have barcode labels that extend the length of the box and appear on nearly every surface[1] (and they minimize the movements required of their staff to perform that job). You can have 4 people with full carts in front of you and they're cleared out before a typical Walmart scanner handles one half-full cart. When I saw they introduced self-checkout, my heart sunk, but I used it. I think it's the only automated check-out system I've used that works. You get that product anywhere near the laser and it scans. It's amazing how much of that process comes down to the barcode scanner working properly. [0] In one case -- their Mocha iced coffee -- I can't drink other brands any longer [1] In some cases they slap a barcode on non-store branded products.

agloe_dreams 3y ago
Recently, Aldi has started TV brand advertising here in PA, one of their biggest US markets. I was actually shocked by how incredibly core to the store moral their ads are - they literally brag about their smaller sku count, small stores, no cart pushers, and no loyalty cards. The tag line is 'Because, everything we don't do, is for you.'. Here is the over the top holiday ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWqmctnWa8&ab_channel=ALDIUSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWqmctnWa8&ab_channel=ALDIU... The newer non-holiday ads are more direct to the point on the checkout efficiency. If I didn't know better, I would say they were working with TBWA\Chiat\Day or re-incarnated steve jobs to run their ad campaign. Edit: It is a Leo Burnett Campaign.

jancsika 3y ago

Aldi consistently sells avocados for 60% less than the discounted avocado at the big chains. And this is in an area where avocados aren't grown. How are they able to do this across so many food categories? The interview doesn't answer this question.

s_dev 3y ago
By having a really low range of inventory and really high turnover of that inventory so they focus on bulk buying only a few items. Walmart sells everything and there is a cost in supporting being a one stop shop. In Aldi it's typical to have 1 type of smoked back bacon for example while Walmart might have 10 types of smoked back bacon.
Kon-Peki 3y ago
They try to cut out as many layers of middlemen as possible, and then act as a reliable partner (they pay in full, on time, every single time and never make a supplier refund them for unsold product). In the case of your avocados, they're probably buying them directly from the farmer: > When you partner with ALDI you can expect simplified processes that give you more time to invest in your business, while receiving high-volume, timely orders that allow you to plan ahead. > Prefer to work directly with manufacturers or growers [1] [1] https://corporate.aldi.us/suppliers/become-a-supplier/ https://corporate.aldi.us/suppliers/become-a-supplier/

feverzsj 3y ago

Their own chocolate brands are probably the best ones among supermarkets, and it's dramatically cheap.

baxtr 3y ago

Fascinating: > The first thing that struck me was an absolutely rock-solid commitment to gaining the trust of the customer, the employees, the suppliers and business partners. Almost every rule or method or procedure of the company was built around ensuring that. To be frank, I hadn’t seen something like that before. Yes, looking after your customers is a standard prerequisite for a good retail company, so that wasn’t so different or difficult to understand. But really looking after your employees, that was something new to me. For example, having a mantra that says, let’s pay our people as much as we possibly can. I had been involved in the complete opposite before. What do we need to pay; don’t pay a cent more, would probably be the mantra of most of the other business conversations that I had been involved in.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

joezydeco 3y ago

I'm blown away by the floor tile. The interview goes off on a side thread there but is a perfect example of long-term thinking on Albrecht's part. The fact that they also don't trust American crews to install this floor properly is pretty interesting, too.

Duanemclemore 3y ago
As an architect this part made me happy. The way we build is an expression of our values and I think this sums up the Aldi way perfectly.
- joezydeco 3y ago
  A quick web search found a few PDFs from various construction firms that deal with Aldi. Every single guide has some verbiage in there saying "prep the floor in the following manner, then step aside when the German tile subcontractors show up"
troupo 3y ago
It's the Sam Vimes boots theory in practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory --- start quote --- The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. --- end quote ---
- joezydeco 3y ago
  From my experience with German friends and family, this philosophy is extremely ingrained in their culture. They don't understand disposable Walmart-style products and will proudly pay more for quality items that last multiple times longer than their dollar-store counterparts.

drewg123 3y ago

Do they still require a quarter deposit on shopping carts? One opened in the US city where I lived ~15-20 years ago, and they required a coin deposit to use a shopping cart. I don't cary change (not even back then), and requiring a deposit on a cart is the mark of a bad neighborhood. So I just left, and have never returned to an Aldi.

kipchak 3y ago
Yes, though you can ask a cashier for a quarter, at least at the stores I've been to. Feels ore satisfying than it probably should to get an occasional quarter or two for bringing stranded carts back on the way in also.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Candy money for kids !
edmccard 3y ago
A coin deposit is no more a mark of a bad neighborhood than having cart corrals in the parking lot -- like them, it is a way of reducing (or trying to eliminate) the amount of time employees have to spend collecting carts and returning them.
- drewg123 3y ago
  A coin deposit is a signal that either the carts are being stolen, or that they are not being returned to the cart corral. Both are signs of a bad neighborhood in my area of the country.
  - oldandboring 3y ago
    This is a true statement, but I suspect the underlying goal is to reduce overhead and pass the savings on to the consumer and/or the bottom line. This is because if carts are stolen they must be replaced, and if they are not returned to the corral a worker must be paid to do it.

Duanemclemore 3y ago

Great read. We just got an Aldi in my small southern college town a year or so ago. But we had one in my home town in the rural midwest since the late eighties, and because of that one they always popped out of the noise of suburban sprawl to me. So I've been to many across poorer, solidly (US) middle class, and relatively affluent areas. The new one gave me the opportunity to watch something develop. This is anecdotal, so I may be off base and observing something artificial... but here goes. If you go to the one in my very blue collar home town to this day, the product line is dominated by the low-cost, no-frills value items. Stack 'em deep and sell 'em cheap bulk snacks and the like. They might even have a double aisle of shame. After my early experience with this one I went to others in nicer areas and the product line was very, very different - all the charcuterie items and whatnot. Well, the new one here started with a really even mix of the low and high end products. As the location gained more popularity, the nicer items started to take shelf space away from the lower end stuff. So - I could be seeing things, but I think Aldi has a kind of regional (or national?) stock balancing system where they make the most of their smaller footprint by analyzing sales trends for a particular location and stock it with the items that will sell there. Anyway, the new one here is visibly taking market share from the national chain supermarket a couple blocks away where people usually have to go for premium items. I'm really glad it's here. It's ... halved? my grocery bill.

AlbertCory 3y ago

Aldi's relationship to Trader Joe's in the US: https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-and-trader-joes-are-they-the-same-company/ https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-and-trader-joes-are-they-t... https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-joes-the-connection-to-aldi-will-surprise-you/ar-AA1cMPaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-jo...

Semaphor 3y ago
For the lazy (and from memory): there's Aldi South and North in Germany (original brothers kinda divided Germany). North bought Trader Joe's ages ago. Aldi South came too the US as Aldi. Iirc North is mostly Europe only as Aldi. From what I've heard, Aldi South is slightly fancier, but I've never been in one.
- anotheruser13 3y ago
  The split between Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd came about when the brothers had a difference of opinion over selling cigarettes.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    I don't think TJ's sells cigarettes, FWIW. But from what I've heard, they're hands-off with TJ anyway.

topkai22 3y ago

Worth mentioning that Aldi has owned Trader Joe's since 1979. I have barely been to Aldi's, but it seems like they have similar products if a bit different themes.

adwi 3y ago
From someone's link above: > Therefore, if you hear that Aldi and Trader Joe’s are owned by the same group in the United States, you can tell them the truth. While there is a connection between the ownership groups of Theo and Karl Albrecht, they are separate ownership groups that run very different stores that are only connected by the Aldi name. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-joes-the-connection-to-aldi-will-surprise-you/ar-AA1cMPaa https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/who-owns-trader-jo...

dopylitty 3y ago

If you’re interested in grocery stores check out The Secret Life of Groceries[0]. It’s a book that goes into the history of grocery stores in the US along with how the modern supply chain works from sourcing to production to delivery to selling. It also covers how Trader Joe’s and Aldi differed historically and the process that led to Aldi buying Trader Joe’s. 0:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253715/the-secret-life-of-groceries-by-benjamin-lorr/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/253715/the-secret-l...

oftenwrong 3y ago

>There were these myths or legends in the business, which I didn’t, personally, experience, but I knew about them and I could tell you 50 stories like that. I wish I could hear more of them. Someone should write them all down.

soniman 3y ago

If you want to listen https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/in-practise/aldi-culture-operations-of-a-il6IxwDnacV/ https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/in-practise/aldi-cultur...

jsdwarf 3y ago

Aldi pays top salaries, but also expects top performance. An adage goes that they pay you 1.3x the salary of a normal store employee, but expect the performance of 3 employees;-) They were know for doing cashier drills in the pre-barcode age: you had to sum up a shopping cart filled with certain products and report the sum plus time needed. Even now cash desk time per customer is measured - with crazy outcomes, e.g. AlDi cashiers putting groceries in the shopping bag for elderly people so that the dont block the queue too long.

eliaspro 3y ago
An ALDI in the region introduced something, that was unheard of them before. Until now, there was never an area after the cashier to collect & bag your stuff, but instead there was a place to park your shopping cart, so the cashier could toss all of your goods right into it, clearing the area as fast as possible to process the next customer. But now, an ALDI here introduced the collect & bag area with a split - just like many other super markets, so one customer can pack its stuff while the other is already getting its groceries processed. But all this with a twist: there's a separate payment terminal for each collection area, so the payment of the first customer doesn't block the cashier and the register from handling the next one.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  I was quite astonished and impressed (as I thought about it) the first time I saw two fricken payment terminals at one cash register (Aldi Süd, Germany). Around COVID time, people started to pay more often by card, and someone at Aldi realized pretty quickly how they could use that to improve efficiency. There are obviously some ugly failure cases, but they don't pay those high salaries to get dummies who couldn't handle that.

slyall 3y ago

Another Interview with the same guy on the same site Aldi: Hard Discounter Business Models https://inpractise.com/articles/Aldi-hard-discounters-paul-foley https://inpractise.com/articles/Aldi-hard-discounters-paul-f...