Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aldi's Barcode Strategy

motherjones.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 274 posts

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#181

Post by pouetpouet »

shostack wrote: post #102
mdip wrote: post #101

I've been an Aldi fan for more than a decade, buying almost all of my family's groceries there (four kids, it's cheap and doesn't require figuring out what is really on sale this week vs. what is really over-priced this week, or messing with Coupons). The quality of most of their products meets or exceeds that of the name brands[1] except in a few circumstances (their equivalents to Cheerios and Frosted Mini Wheats a…

The sitting thing is common in England (and perhaps elsewhere in Europe). It definitely stood out to me when I was visiting.

standard in France and Germany too. I don't think cashiers usually stand anywhere.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#182

Post by jernfrost »

elevenfist wrote: post #89
Someone1234 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reads like culture shock to me. I am not dismissing your concerns, but I've had the opposite issues going to the US where everyone is super chatty, seemingly needy, and slow. You go into a store and they yell at you "DO YOU NEED SOMETHING" uhh, no, I'm sorry I came in to look around, is that a crime? The waiting staff return to your table every 30 seconds, and the cashiers are more interested in your life story than…

This made me laugh, you'll get used to it and start to enjoy it eventually. It seems like things are more relaxed wherever you are in the us compared to wherever you were previously. When it comes to the "Do you need something," it's part of their job, if you're looking for something specific it's good to know that there are people available to help you. They're not asking you if you have a reason to be in the store,…

For a lot of us northern europeans, it just doesn't fit with our culture. We value honesty and straightforwardness above superficial friendliness. Often I find American customer relationships just provocative. So often they act like robots. You can tell that all their smiles and friendly words are all fake. That makes it all feel like I am being lied to and that employees are forced to act in an unnatural way no matter how they feel that day.

I rather have people act friendly towards me because they want to. If they don't feel that great that day, they don't need to smile and put on a show, as long as they don't give me shit.

And also we like our privacy. When people follow you around the store and keep asking if you need help, or comment on something you are looking at, it just feels invasive and disrespectful.

Mind you I do actually frequently enjoy the more chatty nature of things in the US. And many are genuine about it. But the problem is that for every genuine person there seems to be one that does the whole robot routine because the manager has instructed everybody to have crazy smiles and sell as much shit as possible.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#183

Post by jernfrost »

jschulenklopper wrote: post #73
jernfrost wrote: post #64

Visited Aldi and Lidl in Germany and I am sorry but I can't help hating those stores. It all looks so cheap and barebones that I get depressed just being there. And then the whole experience with the cashier is hyper stressful and they are so blinding fast at scanning the groceries. It is like you are subject to some German Blitzkrieg or something. Interesting with the article that they explained why it was so fast.…

> ... I can't help hating those stores. It all looks so cheap and barebones that I get depressed just being there. Then why go there? Normally, you enter most stores by choice, so after a couple of (negative) experiences, just stop visiting them. Can't speak for all Aldi and Lidl stores (not even in all of The Netherlands), but in my hometown a new Lidl store is actually better than just looking cheap and barebones.…

Sure, and I don't go there. But why can't I still hate them? Does me having a choice mean that I should like them. I hate opera too, and I don't go watching opera either. But am I required to like it because I am not forced to go there?

Anyway in Germany there is not much of a choice whether to enter Lidl or Aldi as they are everywhere and there seems to be little else.

I've lived several years in the Netherlands btw and I really like Albert Heijn. That is more like my kind of store. The Aldi I went to in the Netherlands wasn't actually that bad.

In fact it sort of bothered me that Germany wasn't more like the Netherlands in shopping experience. Germany seems so ultra focused on cheap, plain and efficient.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#184

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

mdip wrote: post #153
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the article doesn't mention: Aldi optimizing the speed of their cashiers is nothing new. The northern Aldi ("Aldi Nord") for a long time had three-digit article codes for every product that cashiers had to know by heart--which also meant that they couldn't have more than 1000 different products. In fact, that system was so efficient that they completely switched to bardcodes only in 2002 as they didn't see any a…

Interesting - Part of me wonders about what their accuracy rate was with that kind of system. 1,000 different 3-digit numbers is still a lot to remember. It's possible, but it would seem to add a pretty big barrier for a lot of people who would otherwise be fine as a cashier, elsewhere. Though when I worked at CompUSA in the early 90s, we lacked barcode readers and each product had a 6-digit SKU which meant only bein…

Well, I am not that familiar with it, but given how much attention they gave to optimizing this, my best guess would be that they made sure that similar products didn't get similar codes. And I guess for a grocery store, mistakes aren't that big a problem, especially for ones that mostly don't sell anything but their own brands (and thus normally don't have all that many similar products at different prices anyway).

Also, yes, the rumor always was that Aldi paid well. Presumably the savings in additional staff and space and cash registers was still worth it.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#185

Post by jernfrost »

atomwaffel wrote: post #72
jernfrost wrote: post #64

Visited Aldi and Lidl in Germany and I am sorry but I can't help hating those stores. It all looks so cheap and barebones that I get depressed just being there. And then the whole experience with the cashier is hyper stressful and they are so blinding fast at scanning the groceries. It is like you are subject to some German Blitzkrieg or something. Interesting with the article that they explained why it was so fast.…

> It all looks so cheap and barebones that I get depressed just being there. Can I ask which part of Germany you've been to – or rather which Aldi (Nord or Süd)? There's a surprising amount of difference between the two and I've always found one of them far nicer than the other.

I was in Berlin

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#186

Post by kagamine »

jboles wrote: post #154
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is how POS systems in the US have regressed over the past 25 years. The IBM registers I used in the early 90s were fast and accurate while slinging packages over the scanner. Nowadays everything is laggy and needs special care to present the UPC to the machine just so. That is except for Aldi's systems.

This is so true. I worked as a supermarket checkout operator at a large Australian chain of supermarkets for a few years, and the PoS systems were redone while I was there. Before were old Fujitsu machines running an old version of OS/2 with mechanical keyboards. After overhaul, Windows xp embedded machines with touch screens. The touch screens were a massive step backwards, especially when it came to punching in pro…

The touch screens allow us (I work in backend retail) to push updates to hundreds of shops across a region without having to update those mechanical keyboards. It's a huge benefit to the industry. Before, when a new feature was added we had to send a human technician out to every one of those shops. Or get the shop managers to replace the key, or sticker the key. You can see how much easier it is to push updates over a network compared to the alternatives.

As for scanners, they vary a lot in design and intended purpose but with some optimization and testing they are are always better than the emerging tech for scanning items; your smartphone camera. The industry is heading toward you doing the scanning yourself (albeit in addition to the traditional shop model). Phone cameras are a pita having not been designed for this purpose. I don't see any IR scanners being available to the general smartphone market any time soon, but they do exist as 'jackets', mostly for tablets.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#187

Post by walterbell »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #167
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is how POS systems in the US have regressed over the past 25 years. The IBM registers I used in the early 90s were fast and accurate while slinging packages over the scanner. Nowadays everything is laggy and needs special care to present the UPC to the machine just so. That is except for Aldi's systems.

So true it hurts. My go-to grocery recently downgraded to the CC chip customer-facing-POS. I used to be able to swipe my card ahead of time and generally be on my way within about 6 seconds of the last item being scanned. Now the system has no pre-swipe ability and far more lag. Like, the first few times I used it I messed up and hit wrong buttons because there was ~1000ms of lag. It works sorta-alright if you use th…

Yes, the new CC chip readers are so slow (must keep card in machine vs. quick swipe) and multi-step that it's faster to use cash.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#188

Post by aninhumer »

stuaxo wrote: post #125
shostack wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sitting thing is common in England (and perhaps elsewhere in Europe). It definitely stood out to me when I was visiting.

Yup, basically all food stores are sitting, but clothing shops all seem to be standing, weirdly.

Cashiers in clothing stores are removing hangers and folding things all the time, which is easier if they're standing.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#189

Post by carlob »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #145
mdip wrote: post #101

I've been an Aldi fan for more than a decade, buying almost all of my family's groceries there (four kids, it's cheap and doesn't require figuring out what is really on sale this week vs. what is really over-priced this week, or messing with Coupons). The quality of most of their products meets or exceeds that of the name brands[1] except in a few circumstances (their equivalents to Cheerios and Frosted Mini Wheats a…

What the article doesn't mention: Aldi optimizing the speed of their cashiers is nothing new. The northern Aldi ("Aldi Nord") for a long time had three-digit article codes for every product that cashiers had to know by heart--which also meant that they couldn't have more than 1000 different products. In fact, that system was so efficient that they completely switched to bardcodes only in 2002 as they didn't see any a…

I wonder if there is some information theory paper to be written here. On one hand you want the most common products sold to have low Komogorov complexity codes (111, 123, 147, …).

Then there is the question of the distance between similar products and similar codes: is it better to have similarly priced products have similar codes, so that errors don't amount to much in the final tally, or to space out similar goods so that confusion is avoided?

Maybe there is a whole phase diagram of optimal strategies that depends on the error rate. But then again one has to have a good error model. Do errors come from mistyping or from misremembering?

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#190

Post by kagamine »

matt4077 wrote: post #61
jankassens wrote: post #4

They used to type in short (3 or 4 digits) codes for the products at Aldi in Germany maybe 10 years ago. I assume they did this because the scanner technology was not as fast. The cashiers memorized the codes and were crazy fast.

If I remember correctly, the codes were the prices. Which meant they could not have to products at the exact same price, and had quite a few products at strange prices like DM4.32 (while almost all competitors had their kitchen-psychology prices of 9.99).

Each product in the database will have a barcode (GTIN, EAN) and a PLU which is often a 4-6 digit code assigned internally. The PLUs are used as lookup codes when the barcode fails (usually because the product is not entered in the DB). The codes afaik were never prices, you would use prices for that.
Post reply on HN