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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

#381

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #349
rayiner wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#382

Post by bkyan »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #252
nyolfen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i keep a quarter in my car specifically for aldi

Exactly. They make it seem so hard, esp "don't carry cash folks." I keep about $2 in quarters in my car. At least one is for Aldi, most are for air if I need it, and an extra few on whatever might come up. The latter are often drink machines.

Air? For putting more air in your tires?

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

#383

Post by freeflight »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #343
freeflight wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Those are some really weird sales then, what use is the sale if nobody knows about it?

In Germany, most grocers have little leaflets where the majority of sales are announced a bit ahead of time.

Aldi makes a lot of consumer goods business with that, when they sold their first desktop in the mid-90s, all of them built by Medion in the UK, it was a huge deal with long waiting lines even before the stores opened and them running out of stock in a matter of hours.

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

#384

Post by nickpsecurity »

bkyan wrote: post #382
nickpsecurity wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They make it seem so hard, esp "don't carry cash folks." I keep about $2 in quarters in my car. At least one is for Aldi, most are for air if I need it, and an extra few on whatever might come up. The latter are often drink machines.

Air? For putting more air in your tires?

Yes. They've been asking for more quarters lately, too. Some will give it to you free (complementary air) if you buy something in the store. Others stay extra greedy.

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

#385

Post by albertshin »

DenisM wrote: post #376
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…

I wonder if one can pin a camera on the ceiling looking down at the conveyor belt, scanning all barcodes at once? Better than doing them manually one by one. If every box has barcodes on every side it should be possible for the software, knowing the size of the box, to get an idea if everything was scanned correctly or if an item had the barcode obscured. Maybe 2-3 cameras under different angles. Cameras are cheap, a…

Is checkout speed really limiting factor in grocery store growth though? Like are people that sensitive to the few extra minutes (at most) at the checkout counter they'll switch where they shop?

I personally can't see myself switching from my local store even if it takes like 3 more minutes to check out. Maybe I'm just lucky though to think it's 3 minutes extra at most?...

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

#386

Post by jordinl »

flingo wrote: post #69
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a quarter to get a cart, 4-6 isles, no in car delivery, you have to bag your stuff yourself. Europe.

In europe, it's 1 or 2 euro. (both work) You get it back when you return the trolley though.

I'm in Spain and I use 0.5€ and 1€

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

#387

Post by barry-cotter »

sorenjan wrote: post #333
freeflight wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having somebody collect the trolleys creates a job, having somebody pack the groceries creates another job, just like having somebody do the refueling of your car at the gas station. They are not especially demanding or well-paying jobs, but the shift to service-driven economies isn't a new thing nor particularly exclusive to the US.

That's one of the biggest differences between the US and Sweden, and probably most of Europe; access to cheap labor. Too cheap, if you ask me. You could never employ somebody as a greeter here, or to pack your groceries, or to pump your gas, or other extremely menial and near useless jobs. Can people really support themselves on those, or are they forced to work multiple jobs? It's actually becoming relevant here, be…

> That's one of the biggest differences between the US and Sweden, and probably most of Europe; access to cheap labor. Too cheap, if you ask me. You could never employ somebody as a greeter here, or to pack your groceries, or to pump your gas, or other extremely menial and near useless jobs. Can people really support themselves on those, or are they forced to work multiple jobs?

That’s what the minimum wage is for, to make it impossible to legally and profitably employ people with limited education and work experience. If people with low skills could get work experience and develop skills that way it would discourage them from getting an education and we wouldn’t want that. Everyone should get as much education as their social betters think appropriate. /s

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

#388

Post by neolefty »

PorterDuff wrote: post #105
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…

Do they have scales? One thing I've admired about Grocery Outlet is the lack of them.

The ones near me do have scales, in two places

* Analog spring-based scales in the produce section, for customers to check weights before they buy

* Precise scales at checkout, built into the scanner / register.

However, most things are sold by package — only a few are sold by weight.

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

#389

Post by joncrane »

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…

Well, think about it. Safeway makes less money when the product is on sale. And people are used to the popular flavors selling out when the product goes on sale. (The exact same thing happens with ice cream, especially Ben and Jerrys).

Safeway's job is to maximize profit, not maximize number of units sold at sale price.

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

#390

Post by mortenjorck »

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…

Knowledgable, in-the-weeds, yet accessible discussion of a domain I have no connection to might be my favorite thing about HN comments.
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