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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

#351

Post by grawprog »

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…

I don't know how it works at other stores, but at the grocery store I worked at Christie handled all their own products. One of their reps came in to stock the shelves, do orders and take away expired products. Their products came in a special order and sat in the warehouse until the Christie Rep came. It was like that for all their products, triscuits included.

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

#353

Post by thakoppno »

GCA10 wrote: post #289
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

Wrt to depends, maybe their algo gradient descends on natural language first? This guy doesn’t need kids diapers anymore, lets try something less specific.

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

#354

Post by opportune »

foota wrote: post #345
opportune wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, I live in the US. But from what I've heard about software engineer salaries in the UK, even at most large multinationals (except only Google?), it seems someone with 5 yoe as a store manager at Aldis in the UK makes (afaik) more than basically every software engineer with 5 yoe in the UK

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

#355

Post by keanebean86 »

GCA10 wrote: post #289
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

Hopefully it's not this again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

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

#356

Post by thaumasiotes »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #335
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…

Nabisco is a DSD vendor. It's own sales associates and merchandisers are responsible for ordering and stocking the shelves. These people are on site (in-store) at most once per day (depending on the unit volume of the store and delivery schedules). Data gets funneled to the sales associate to make their own judgement calls about ordering (though they may be on auto-ordering depending on how close of a relationship th…

This is a great comment, thanks very much.

I have almost nothing more to add, but I'll mention that I recall reading about Wal-mart's practice of making shelf stockers responsible for deciding which products get how much shelf space, and even for ordering the appropriate products -- the theory being that the shelf stocker is the guy in the best position to notice which products are or aren't flying off the shelves. (Whereas, according to what I read, at a standard grocery store, the shelf space itself is sold to a supplier, and they get to dictate what goes on it.) And when I read that, it made me think of the triscuits issue, and imagine that what was happening was that triscuit varieties were being stocked without bothering to look into whether they were popular.

If you have further things to say in this area, I will certainly read them with interest.

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

#357

Post by moron4hire »

Yeah, the three other grocery stores in a mile radius around our local Aldi are all quaking in their boots. It's just been exhausting, wondering if every day is going to be the last day you open the doors. They've each only been able to complete one renovation in the last two years, and I'm sure they'd double the number of auto-check out lanes if it weren't for that meddling Aldi!

In other words, I haven't exactly seen anything "upended" yet.

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

#358

Post by jacobmassey »

GCA10 wrote: post #289
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

..what data department?

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

#359

Post by wahern »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #337
deathanatos wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… /s. I really hate trying to turn into a spot that's flanked by two SUVs only to find a cart in the way. People are incredibly lazy. I love the ALDI's quarter scheme… it's just enough of a nudge to get people to do the decent thing.

I find that funny because we were taught growing up that leaving your cart out keeps the cart-collecting people employed, kind of like refusing to use the self-service checkout -- a different decent thing!

The carts still need collecting. And at least when I worked at K-Mart in the 1990s, there was no dedicated cart collecting person; it was the task of whoever had the free time, usually someone handling stocking, typically junior, and especially someone young (though these days they have the electric carts).

What you were told sounds like one of those slightly tongue-in-cheek excuses people sometimes use to justify behavior, though that doesn't necessarily make it insincere. For most of high school I worked dishwashing jobs. A typical task for a dishwasher includes picking up trash in the parking lot. People throwing trash in the parking lot weren't doing me or anyone else any favors.

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

#360

Post by davrosthedalek »

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…

Re barcodes, in Germany, in the beginning, the cashiers were trained enough that they could actually enter the UPC from memory faster than scanning the item. Later, they added the barcodes on all sides which increased the speed even more.

The quarter in the cart thing is very common in Germany even at high end supermarkets. The higher overhead compared to the US makes it very hard to higher people for this kind of job -- the minimal gain in customer acquisition doesn't pay for it.

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