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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…
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Do they have scales? One thing I've admired about Grocery Outlet is the lack of them.
Scales to weigh fruit/veg? No at leas not in Germany. The scales are built into the barcode scanner of the register. They only have scales so you can double check when you are shopping.
All fruit/vegetables/meat are sold by the item or in fixed price bags and packages.
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So, to sum up these complaints- retail companies have a lot of data at their hands- they just need to look at it and do something with it.
Why do you assume that retail companies are not looking at data already? Target was (in)famously able to predict that a teenager was pregnant before she herself knew based on her shopping habits. It's entirely possible that retail companies are already following a close to optimal strategy (don't sell too many items at such a low price because they're a loss leader?).
Target noticed she was pregnant before her father noticed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
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…
What's so weird is that all those sound rudimentary rather than innovative to my european ears.
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> depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts What's the alternative? Growing up in Germany I've literally never seen it any other way.
In the United States carts are free. You collect a cart at the entrance to the store, and return the cart to a cart corral in the parking lot next to your car. Then a worker from the store periodically goes out to the corral to collect the carts and return them to the store entrance.
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I think I just started to understand why the US has such a low unemployment rate but so many are paid minimal wage...
Out of ~80M hourly wage workers, only ~500k of them are paid minimum wage. Given the size of the workforce and the fact that starter jobs do exist, that's not 'so many' at all.. [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm
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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…
Same thing happens here, except there is always a loyalty card special on some items. If you want, say, a 12-pack of Vanilla Coke Zero, well, you have to buy three of them at once to avoid being reamed at the register. But you had better get there right after it's restocked, because it's always "Buy 2, get 1 free" or worse, "Buy 2, get 2 free," and they never stock more than three or four cartons at a time. Every tim…
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What's so weird is that all those sound rudimentary rather than innovative to my european ears.
Yep. The most notable thing about Aldi (and similar competitor Lidl) from a UK perspective is that they pay above average for comparable supermarket jobs and reduce staffing accordingly. But I remember putting coins into slots for a trolley (and reclaiming them!) when I was young enough to be sitting in the child seat nearly 30 years ago, long before Aldi was a factor in the UK market. Is this really an innovative co…
I find it remarkable how positive the tone is of this article compared to how a decade or two ago US mainstream media was wailing about WalMart killing mom&pop shops and corner grocery stores. I wonder why that is? If anything once this chain expands it'll drive all the remaining small grocers out of business, since it's considerably cheaper than even walmart.
Post-Walmart/2008 America is living paycheck to paycheck. It's harder to vilify those who undercut competitors if that means people get to eat this week.