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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

#281

Post by eunoia »

jonas21 wrote: post #266
CamperBob2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think they know exactly what they're doing. Those soda deals are usually loss leaders, i.e. the store takes a loss on every 12-pack they sell, but make it up in all of the other stuff you buy now that you're in the store. If they can get you to come into the store and not buy the soda, that's a great outcome. Of course, if that happens too often, you'll stop going, so it's a balance. They've probably figured out ho…

I don’t understand how the soda display is supposed to pull in new shoppers.

Americans tend to drive to the grocery store in my experience. To me, this means most people committed to shopping at the store long before they got there and saw the soda display.

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

#282

Post by user5994461 »

starbugs wrote: post #10

It's quite impressive how things have turned. Not long ago Walmart was about to disrupt the German supermarket landscape. They even tried to cut prices to below market cost to conquer Aldi, Lidl, and the other big discount supermarket chains. After a couple of years they gave up and left. Now Aldi appears to be "fighting back" successfully in the US. The history of Aldi's efficiency [0] is pretty impressive. It actua…

>>> They even tried to cut prices to below market cost

I highly doubt that. It's illegal to sell under cost in Europe.

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

#283

Post by fjsolwmv »

kodablah wrote: post #233
burfog wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important distinction in general. Many of the ills Aldi attempts to combat generally are non-existent in other grocery stores in some places, thereby only serving to inconvenience those customers for no gain.

The ills Aldi combats are work that costs the money, like stockers and baggers.

But making customers do the work, Aldi can make more profit and/or customers can save money by doing their own elbow grease

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

#284

Post by lqet »

hobofan wrote: post #101
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…

> 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.

Most of the IKEAs I have been to in Germany don't do this. They have a couple of poorly payed workers who do nothing else all day than collect carts from the parking space.

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

#285

Post by denimnerd42 »

orthoxerox wrote: post #128
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…

TIL you can call American stores. Why do people do that?

call and ask if they have a rare produce item in stock like Rhubarb or something..

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

#286

Post by [deleted] »

the_duke wrote: post #187
llamataboot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to shop at Aldi because of the almost brutal aesthetic. No signage, no colors, no nice lighting, just industrial meta shelves on an industrial floor with bare fluorescent lights overhead and everything jammed together. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. I will however still occasionally run in because although they run out quick almost every day, when they have grass-fed meat and some organ…

I've wondered why they don't improve the aesthetics a little bit, it can't make that much of a difference to the bottom line. I think it's just part of the philosophy: you come because it's cheap and the quality is good for the price point, you buy, you leave. You don't get a experience, you get a utilitarian transaction. And that is reflected by the interior.

[deleted]

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

#287

Post by fjsolwmv »

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…

The article critical piece of the old scheme is tar before computers, no one had a use for tracking whether the correct price was actually charged. And thanks to inflation, the range of possible prices was smaller.

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

#288

Post by johnpowell »

_pRwn_ wrote: post #263

mwahaha! Americans encountering our unfiltered, brutal, German efficiency ... you better start learning how to pack your groceries at the checkout at German speeds ... see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LfkwjJdITA

We have a place called WincCo here that has a divider. The cashier sends your groceries down one side and when they are done ringing your stuff up they slide the divider over and send the next persons stuff down the other side while you bag yours.

https://i.imgur.com/K6A78XA.jpg

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

#289

Post by GCA10 »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #198
thaumasiotes wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Safeway's use of data is comically bad.

Since 2010 or so, I've been signed up for their Just4U special discounts, based on what they know about my shopping habits, as a California dad. Recently they offered me a bonus coupon for Pampers diapers.

Not a match! Our kids have been out of diapers since the days when BlackBerry was the coolest phone in town. Maybe longer. I'm not impulse-buying diapers for anyone else's kids.

They let a week go by and then offered me a special deal on Depends, the old-people's diapers. Not in my current need list either.

Another week goes by, and they come up with a third idea. This time it's a discount coupon for Kotex sanitary napkins.

Hello? They've got about nine years of regular shopping data on me. If they still make multi-decade errors in identifying my age -- and can't get my gender right -- their data department hasn't even made it into the abacus era.

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

#290

Post by user5994461 »

war1025 wrote: post #258
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…

Kind of an interesting comment because growing up the comment I always heard from people was "Avoid fresh produce at Aldi" because it had a reputation for being bad.

If I have learned one thing in a lifetime, it's that freshness depends on each shop. There is no consistency even for a chain of supermarkets in the same city. It's like each one has its own supply chain.
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