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

531–540 of 653 posts

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

#531

Post by wolfgke »

imhoguy wrote: post #496
jaabe wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are two ALDIs as article mentions and they differ in quality

At least in Germany, where there exist both Aldi and Aldi Süd, quality is not a trait that people would claim that these two differ (they would rather say that the difference lies in assortment).

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

#532

Post by eeZah7Ux »

mft_ wrote: post #512
anovikov wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve never seen this anywhere, ever ? And honestly, if there was two euros going for simply moving a trolley back to its parking zone, I suspect you would have shoppers who found it worth doing that for all of the free carts, let alone people with less money coming in to collect.

Indeed. The only few cases are for trolleys left kilometers away.

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

#533

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

mft_ wrote: post #512
anovikov wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve never seen this anywhere, ever ? And honestly, if there was two euros going for simply moving a trolley back to its parking zone, I suspect you would have shoppers who found it worth doing that for all of the free carts, let alone people with less money coming in to collect.

Sometimes there are homeless people loitering in the parking lots offering to take your empty cart to pocket the coin in them.

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

#534

Post by wiredfool »

tastroder wrote: post #501
anovikov wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Germany most newer carts take 50ct, 1€, and 2€ coins. The older ones took 1€ (or 1DM before the introduction of the Euro). Abandoned carts on the premises aren't much of a thing anywhere I lived except for maybe the odd lazy person with a plastic coin in it (some.people carry those around e.g. on their key chain for when they don't have coins on hand).

Any of the ones that take a 1 eur coin will take a 20c one as well. Which is good, because there are always a bunch of them in the cup holders.

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

#535

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

namdnay wrote: post #467
chungleong wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concept just doesn't work as well in the US. Parking lots are larger than in Europe. You'd need a guy to move the carts from satellite collections points back to the store anyway.

That’s the same in Europe, there will be a collection point every 50m or so, then they drive round with carts to trail them back to base. I don’t necessarily agree with you for parking lot size, some of the hypermarkets here in France are huge

In the article it actually discusses this - the article states that a lot of US grocers tried to have the coin carts in the ‘80s and ‘90s but there was apparently enough of a consumer backlash to them that they took them away. So it’s more of a cultural thing it seems.

Anecdotally I think it’s not as much of a problem with Aldi today because

1. The Aldi parking lots in USA are all pretty tiny

2. People generally know what they are signing up for when they go to an Aldi

Generally I think that there would still be a backlash today if Walmart implemented coin carts, for instance. Which I really despise because as someone who worked as a cart pusher as a kid it’s unnecessarily infuriating for me to see the pure laziness of shoppers who can’t be arsed to walk 5 meters to drop their cart into the return location and instead push it onto the median next to their car.

Side note I want to take this chance to say that I absolutely love Aldi. There’s one that’s just far enough away from where I live to make it not worth the drive and the second they build one closer I will immediately do all of my grocery shopping there :)

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

#536

Post by cameronbrown »

function_seven wrote: post #500
y4mi wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Here in the UK I've seen cans priced at 2/3 a regular bottle - far worse value.

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

#537

Post by CydeWeys »

function_seven wrote: post #500
y4mi wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

2L bottles are just way too big unless you have multiple people drinking or a serious habit (in which case you really should just cut back). The problem is the soda goes stale so quickly once opened.

My ideal is soda fountain machines, but of course I'm not gonna have one of those in my apartment, so the next best is cans.

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

#538

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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…

> Can people really support themselves on those, or are they forced to work multiple jobs?

The latter. The US has an army of unskilled workers that work two jobs, live on food stamps and have no health insurance.

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

#539

Post by hjk05 »

> without compromising on quality

This might be true of the new American stores but is definitely not true in Northern Europe, they regularly have rotten fruit in the stands and I only once dared buying the frozen fish which led to a nasty case of diarrhea. This was back in my student days, when I realized paying 3% more for meat and vegs was worth the extra cost if you can avoid spending 2 days in bed because of a good price on salmon.

At the end of the day I can’t really blame the store personal, they where 2 people running everything, at a size that usually see 8+ for competing chains and the wage was the absolute minimum allowed by law.

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

#540

Post by jetbooster »

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?

Currently software engineer, currently earning £42k, 2.5 years out of uni. So yes.
Post reply on HN