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

Post by Scoundreller » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #209

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 ,…

Post by kodablah » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

burfog wrote: post #186

groby_b wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

The US has that stuff in bad neighborhoods. The wheel clamp is probably pretty standard in the urban areas and/or poor areas. Out in the well-off places where there aren't wandering street people, wheel clamps would be pointless. The expense, including repairs and downtime, is not justified.

Post by wahern » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

orthoxerox wrote: post #137

kome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, reading this article as European (that never visited the US) was a weirding experience. I lived in 4 different countries in Europe, and that's exactly how every supermarket work. And to be fair, I thought that every supermarket in the world worked like that... Can you imagine when the Americans will find automatic counters instead of cashiers? :)

I think they do have them. They know phrases like "Unexpected item in bagging area".

Post by resoluteteeth » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Fri, May 17, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

zepearl wrote: post #56

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #19

In addition to being the cheapest, I'm often impressed by the quality of some of Aldi's pantry staples. Specifically, I'm blown away by their onions. I buy a bag of onions every 1-3 weeks. Since I can't individually inspect every onion in the bag, I'm resigned to the fact that anywhere from 10-30% of the onions will be unusable when I start to cut into them and find the rot. This is true of pretty much every grocer I…

A friend of mine worked for a logistic company and he told me many times that dealing with Aldi was a nightmare for them because they were extremely demanding: very thin profit margin, tough quality checks (when delivering the items to the warehouses the checks were done on many more samples and in a much more detailed way than what other supermarket chains did) and if the truck arrived at the warehouse anytime after…