Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 653 posts

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

#491

Post by anigbrowl »

hannob wrote: post #478
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 feel quite a few of those things are pretty standard in Europe, so I wonder if ALDI is just exporting european practices to the US. "Coin for a cart" e.g. is almost normal. I noticed that barcodes on all sides of a product is becoming more common, particularly in stores that allow self-scan (ALDI doesn't, but it obviously makes things easier also for customers that self-scan).

Aldi made quite a lot of those things standard in Europe.

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

#492

Post by blotter_paper »

RandomTisk wrote: post #483
blotter_paper wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts Years ago when I read the bit in Freakonomics about the daycare that instituted an additional charge for picking kids up late to discourage the practice but found that the rate of late pickups increased instead because parents felt like they were paying for the service of extra daycare thus alleviating the guilt, I immediately thought…

Owning a shopping cart at the house would be the epitome of low class in my opinion.

Putting aside your classism and focusing on the observation of human behavior, I've seen people do this who regularly used the same stolen cart to get groceries (sometimes from different stores). I've also seen people use a cart to get their food back home and then just leave it nearby without the intent of further ownership, even bringing more carts from the same store and putting them more-or-less next to each other rather than push an empty cart back to the grocery store.

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

#493

Post by thaumasiotes »

Zarel wrote: post #490
tw04 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You might also find the white is partly a byproduct that needs to be made no matter what. White is literally the color of the cheese. The "yellow" has food coloring and "flavor" added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese

I assume this is a metaphor. But even for products that _are_ byproducts, it seems like the correct solution is to sell the less-popular one at a lower price.

Or... not buy it, as c3534l suggested. The fact that I produce egg whites and egg yolks together doesn't mean everyone who buys my whites is obligated to also buy a proportional quantity of yolks. That would defeat the whole purpose of separating them in the first place.

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

#494

Post by iforgotpassword »

jaabe wrote: post #482
hannob wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel quite a few of those things are pretty standard in Europe, so I wonder if ALDI is just exporting european practices to the US. "Coin for a cart" e.g. is almost normal. I noticed that barcodes on all sides of a product is becoming more common, particularly in stores that allow self-scan (ALDI doesn't, but it obviously makes things easier also for customers that self-scan).

That was my thought as well. I live in Denmark, I think ALDI is one of our least efficient supermarket chains which is why they’ve had to fill the niche of low-quality-low-price. I never knew American supermarkets were so terrible. I mean, you read about the Amazon grocery stores and get the picture of Europe being far behind.

I think ALDI being low quality is mostly a myth, just assumed because of their low prices. The only thing I don't but there is meat, greatly prefer the local butcher.

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

#495

Post by anovikov »

hannob wrote: post #478
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 feel quite a few of those things are pretty standard in Europe, so I wonder if ALDI is just exporting european practices to the US. "Coin for a cart" e.g. is almost normal. I noticed that barcodes on all sides of a product is becoming more common, particularly in stores that allow self-scan (ALDI doesn't, but it obviously makes things easier also for customers that self-scan).

Haha except in EU it's not a quarter, it's 2 euros! And tons of carts still hang around abandoned with 2-coins in them.

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

#496

Post by imhoguy »

jaabe wrote: post #482
hannob wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel quite a few of those things are pretty standard in Europe, so I wonder if ALDI is just exporting european practices to the US. "Coin for a cart" e.g. is almost normal. I noticed that barcodes on all sides of a product is becoming more common, particularly in stores that allow self-scan (ALDI doesn't, but it obviously makes things easier also for customers that self-scan).

That was my thought as well. I live in Denmark, I think ALDI is one of our least efficient supermarket chains which is why they’ve had to fill the niche of low-quality-low-price. I never knew American supermarkets were so terrible. I mean, you read about the Amazon grocery stores and get the picture of Europe being far behind.

There are two ALDIs as article mentions and they differ in quality: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/63hce5/aldi_nord_bl...

Aldi Süd seems to be more preffered, however I personally prefer Lidl which is based on similar efficiency concepts.

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

#497

Post by itronitron »

rini17 wrote: post #136
itronitron wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my experience that's pretty standard for european grocery stores. No cashier in Europe is ever going to bag your groceries. Despite bagging your own groceries being a universal experience I haven't yet seen a local properly use a self-serve checkout kiosk. Instead of scanning an item and putting it in a bag on the weighing platform they instead scan the items and put them on the weighing platform, then pay,…

I tried to, but it's impossible to resist temptation to rearrange stuff in the bags on weighing platform. The machine then seizes with complaint about unexpected stuff in bagging area. So I gave up on that.

The first two times I used the self-serve kiosk the machine complained constantly about unexpected stuff, and I noticed that I had placed my bags up to the edge of the platform. Now I place them in the middle of the platform and the machine seems happy. Either that or the store adjusted the sensitivity on the machines, hope that helps.

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

#498

Post by _v7gu »

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…

Maybe the causality works in reverse and Safeway discounts triscuits only when they run out of Parmesan Garlic. It would make sense if the supplier only provides equal amounts of each special flavor.

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

#499

Post by iforgotpassword »

c3534l wrote: post #401
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…

I used to work at a grocery store deli. Every week, without fail, we'd sell 75% yellow American cheese and 25% white American cheese (and that's being generous to the amount of white we sold). I asked my boss why we didn't just buy more yellow than white instead of buying exactly one box of white for every box of yellow and she just got mad and said "what, you think you can do my job better than me?" I still deeply w…

My sister used to work at a super market. One of hey colleagues was tasked with checking the inventory and then restock. My sister saw how her colleague clearly saw that they still had 5 boxes of white chocolate and only 2 of the regular one (I don't remember the actual product but it doesn't matter). Her colleague ordered 3 white and 2 regular. "why the heck are you doing this? Obviously there is more demand for the regular one!" My sister exclaimed. "well I like white chocolate better!" Her colleague explained.

So I think it's absolutely possible you could have done your boss' job better. :-)

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

#500

Post by function_seven »

y4mi wrote: post #448
function_seven wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought my store was the only one. At Stater Bros. the Coke product 12-packs will almost always be “on sale” at either 3/10.99, 4/12.99, or sometimes even 5/14.99. (And you must buy the multiple listed to get the deal) Every time, without fail, the Diet Coke column is nearly empty while the Coke, Sprite, and Coke Zero ones are full. Not only that, but Diet Coke gets the smallest portion of the endcap. My only ratio…

As if. All coke products are way over priced. Just look at the pricing between different serving sizes. Their price differs often less than 30%, even if you compare 0.5l to 2l.

Given their sales numbers, I’m sure the prices are spot on. The people buying a 500ml bottle of Coke aren’t looking to lug around a 2L bottle, and the people buying a 2L bottle are focused on saving money.

Me, I like cans. They’re about 35¢ apiece. That’s cheap enough to not worry about, and way better than getting a fountain soda at a fast food restaurant.

Market segmentation at its finest!

Post reply on HN