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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

#341

Post by ppod »

usaphp wrote: post #336
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 Scan speed is never a bottleneck of a checkout process. Packing and payment are. They might be saving millisecond on scan time, but the paper and printing of a label cost money too. Not sure if it’s the best sho…

>It also makes people not want to go there if they don’t have spare change.

I think it fits the philosophy. They aim at customers that have a mindset to go out and save. They are prepared. They're willing to work a bit to save money, but hope to compromise a bit less on quality.

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

#342

Post by sorenjan »

antnisp wrote: post #103
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…

What's so weird is that all those sound rudimentary rather than innovative to my european ears.

When Lidl came to Sweden most people didn't like to shop there because of their short conveyor belts after the cashier [0] relative to the regular Swedish ones [1][2], so you felt stressed when shopping there. There were no room for your groceries. Usually you put your stuff on the belt, the cashier scans it and moves it along, you pay, and then you pack it in your bags.

It took them four years, then they changed to the same ones everyone else uses.

[0] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7YpjO_OmPKo/S3GjfqKcjOI/AAAAAAAAEU...

[1] https://www.ica.se//assets.icanet.se/q_auto,f_auto/imagevaul...

[2] https://uploads.units.se/extrabilder168105_large.jpg

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

#343

Post by thaumasiotes »

freeflight wrote: post #299
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…

> All flavors get the same shelf space, Parmesan Garlic always sells out quickly, and Safeway appears to be happy to forgo the lost sales of Parmesan Garlic triscuits that they could have made if they'd just had them in stock. Imho this is probably due to the fact that they make more than enough money during the sales periods. If somebody shows up during the sales period, with the intention of getting Parmesan Garlic…

The sales aren't announced. They just happen. There have been many times when I specifically went to buy triscuits, and couldn't do it because they happened to be on sale.

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

#344

Post by pbhjpbhj »

thinkling wrote: post #148

Another thing: I'm guessing they don't have paid staff to bag groceries for customers like many US stores, but what they may have that's common in Europe but unknown in the US: the boat-tiller-like divider in the conveyor belt space past the cashier. Customer A's things get rung up and continue to side A. When done with customer A, the cashier shoves the divider across so the belt now takes customer B's stuff to side…

I've not seen these in the UK for a couple of decades.

Indeed they've reduced the space at the end of checkouts. Aldi have a tiny area so you can't pack easily at the checkout (you're supposed to take it to a packing area). But Tesco removed the extra space, reduced their post-checkout space, and will now both offer to pack for you, and wait until you finish before starting to serve the next person.

I'm not really sure of the rationale: I think they can fit more checkouts in if they're narrower, but also if you want to not wait you might do self-checkout of one kind or other.

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

#345

Post by foota »

opportune wrote: post #303
ljf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was running a table at a graduate fair for my company and stood opposite the Aldi grad scheme guys. The grad salary ofter 5 years (if you are accepted on the programme) was great (£75k) and they expected you to be managing multiple stores in an area. They had quite a queue of students. https://www.aldirecruitment.co.uk/area-manager-programme/our...

I find it so weird how in the UK and much of the rest of europe, store managers and lots of blue collar jobs get paid so much more than software developers, even at large companies.

Are you saying your software engineers make below 75k?

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

#346

Post by sorenjan »

ThJ wrote: post #44
Glawen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god, aldi/lidl and ikea are the worst shops in europe. I can't imagine a country filled with the same awful shops

The Nordic countries are not big on service, because you're a big boy and can take care of yourself. The reason IKEA came from Sweden is because that's the attitude here. Shop clerks aren't there to be your servants. They are your equals. Foreigners often complain of the awful service they get here, but it's a deliberate part of the working culture.

One time when I was the last customer to shop before closing (yes, our stores close over night) a store employee bagged my groceries while I payed for them. It felt extremely awkward and I felt embarrassed and didn't know what to do. So I just stood there, watching as somebody else packed my stuff, smiled, said thank you, and left feeling really weird. I don't know how other people do it regularly.

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

#347

Post by dude01 »

I love all Aldi's! The main reasons are : 1. Time - I can be in and out in 10 minutes. 2. Prices - the prices are about 20 to 30% cheaper then the other major grocery chain near me.

Also, it's the only brand that I will praise to random people, that's how much I love it.

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

#348

Post by ohyeshedid »

mthwl wrote: post #47

Just a quick alternative viewpoint: as a parent, I’ve been turned off by Aldi in the past. Often with a toddler and/or car seat in hand, unlocking a cart (for example) is not just an inconvenience, it’s a dealbreaker. I’m into the pursuit of efficiency and low prices, but there are some real world benefits of “full service” grocery stores. One being an nicer experience for the disabled (in my case, due to being a par…

"One being an nicer experience for the disabled (in my case, due to being a parent)."

I think it's incredibly disingenuous to compare your parental responsibility to being disabled, especially under the guise of experiences for disabled people.

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

#349

Post by maxerickson »

rayiner wrote: post #197
yardie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is the epitome of bullshit, bureaucratic jobs. Medical billing, for example, is someone taking the list of procedures a medical office performs and plugs that into a computer so that the "codes" the office uses can match the "codes" the healthcare provider uses. I know what you're thinking, that describes a LUT (lookup table). Yes, you would be correct, a LUT is an actual profession in the USA.

I’ve never encountered an example of a real “bullshit job” (but have encountered a lot of ignorance about what different jobs entail.) Dealing with medical billing codes is not just a table lookup. It’s actually quite fuzzy and some judgment is required because the codes don’t match 1:1. (Not does the procedure the doctor actually did match perfectly to any code.) (And you can be criminally prosecuted for not doing i…

How do you evaluate the quality of the bagging if you don't know how to do a good job?

Are they just faster?

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

#350

Post by osrec »

Someone wrote: post #265
Cyph0n wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t free if you don’t have a quarter on hand.

You don’t need a quarter, just something quarter-sized. Google “shopping cart coin keychain” for examples.

Quite right; my family has a few plastic "coins" that work just as well.

Here in the UK, shopping carts used to take a £1 coin, which incidentally had very similar geometry to the Indian 5 rupee coin (worth about 5 pence) - that was a great little find for our family, who always had a few 5 rupee coins lying around from our time visiting family in India. Sadly they updated the design of the £1 coin, so this trick no longer works.

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