For our family, Aldi + Instacart has measurably changed our lives for the better. Not having to go to shopping with toddlers and still paying a reasonable amount for groceries has been amazing.
Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
561–570 of 653 posts
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
They stuck to it for a long time and the argument was indeed speed and to some extend ergonomics (the cashier doesn't need to lift up items). There is a system to it (100-199 is liquor, 400-499 dairy etc.), so it's fairly easy to memorise it.
Still used for fruit and veggies - at least a few years back, in England. Up to 100 codes to memorize, but some would come and go every week or so.
Yeah, but for those they have a cheat sheet next to the register.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#563Earlier 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).
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.
And in Sweden we're removing the coins since the customers no longer carry cash...
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet... haven't you noticed that supermarkets in posher areas are less likely to have the coin slot? (Asda and Tesco are two whose policy varies by location). And in supermarkets with large car parks there are return stations all over the car park. Which means you still need to pay trolley herders...
I think the posh bit is slightly incidental, I think it's shops that people [can] walk to.
Never played Sim City? Zonal planning is not incidental.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
You are right, I worded it wrongly. Unfortunatelly I can't edit or delete my prev post.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so weird is that all those sound rudimentary rather than innovative to my european ears.
American grocery stores are so comically bad and poorly managed it's hard to imagine for a European until you move here. Trust me, it's a shitshow. The only one that works is Trader Joe's for completely different reasons and personally in my first couple years I was completely obsessed with it, now a little less.
You have obviously never shopped in a HEB or Meijers.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cheap medium-quality food is not really just an Aldi/Lidl thing, it's culturally a German thing. Germans just don't care about food quality as much as e.g. French people, so competition values price over quality. I'm German and also this way, that's why I'm generally happy to shop in Aldi/Lidl.
It's also diet and food choices. For example I shop in Aldi here in Ireland and this week a standard problem happened. I went with a list of ingredients to make an Indian curry from scratch and only managed to get about 70 percent of what I needed there. The same thing has happened before when doing a Thai or Chinese meal. Comparatively a normal sizwd Tesco would nearly always have everything. In particular Aldi woul…
That's my experience as well as an Aldi customer in the USA. I just go to see what they have rather than with a specific list in mind because their selection is quite sparse and at least 20-25% of it changes regularly.
At least here in Houston my Aldi is in the middle of an economically depressed area, so despite the poor selection they're still better than the small convenience stores which have little to no fresh food of any kind. Everything is prepackaged.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#568Earlier 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.
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.
In some cases the cheaper Aldi products is the same as the more expensive product from another store.
When I was younger there was no difference between olé’s chocolate and Leo with the exception of the package. It was the same taste and factory producing them.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#569I'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…
>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…
To be honest I live in Europe and it's more about getting the quarter back so that you have one for the next time rather than 25c.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#570Earlier 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).
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.
Don't you have homeless people? ;)
In Poland they are quite good at collecting coins from those (and also collecting cans).