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Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

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Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#201

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

jvagner wrote: post #185
MrsPeaches wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do American Aldi grocery cashiers sit? That's what I noticed the most in German grocery stores. American cashiers stand, German cashiers sit.

The ones near me have a sort of stool thingy- it's for sure not standing, but it's close.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#202

Post by convivialdingo »

wongarsu wrote: post #139
wvh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes; it just a psychological trick to stop people abandoning their carts in random locations or perhaps even in the middle of the parking lot.

Also in the rare case that a cart is abandoned someone will quickly bring it back or use it themselves. The person abandoning the cart basically pays the finder

At my Aldis some of the more industrious folks will happily return your cart for you to get the quarter.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#203

Post by coldtea »

everyone wrote: post #122
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -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…

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.

>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...

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#205

Post by xfitm3 »

froindt wrote: post #96

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 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. -if two products are very similar, they'll change the pack…

I do like my plastic bags.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#206

Post by task_queue »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #132
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -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…

This looks related to something that's mystified me for years about Safeway. Background: - Safeway rotates every product through "sale" and "full price" periods. It's a strictly calendar-based thing; every sale price is going to recur if you wait, and every product will spend a lot of time at "full price" and a lot of other time at two or three different "sale" prices. - Triscuits come in a variety of special flavors…

Companies will often sign shelf-space and display agreements with supermarkets when it comes to displaying their brands' products in-store. There very well might be an agreement between Safeway and Nabisco when it comes to their inventory display.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#207

Post by micwag »

bunderbunder wrote: post #177
Grumbledour wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason I have always heard mentioned why they have a deposit is that shopping carts are really expensive and they don't want people to take them home, have teens do silly things with them etc. Maybe that's not so much a problem in the US, where I imagine supermarkets may not be in the city center but mostly reachable by car and thus less foot traffic to take the carts? But maybe the deposit here in Europe is…

Also, most those large stores just outside of town have vast parking lots, enough so that I bet that a lot of people would decide that it's not worth $0.25 to take the cart all the way back to the building. In denser cities where it's just not practical to put your supermarkets impractically far away from literally anyone who might sometimes want to buy some food, what you typically see is some sort of system where t…

Usually bigger super markets in europe have shopping cart stations scattered around the parking lot:

https://www.thomas-clemens-photography.de/blog/es-gibt-eine-...

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#208

Post by theoh »

Karunamon wrote: post #112
xvedejas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

You might be thinking of this system used by Ikea. https://youtu.be/JRXdlgBe8wg

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.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#209

Post by microcolonel »

froindt wrote: post #96

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 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. -if two products are very similar, they'll change the pack…

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.

Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets

#210

Post by frosted-flakes »

usr1106 wrote: post #155
froindt wrote: post #96

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 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. -if two products are very similar, they'll change the pack…

> -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 att…

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.

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