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,

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.