Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should stop that.
Or at least bring last trip's plastic bags into the store with you.
I use them for garbage - I don’t have any left to reuse.
Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
591–600 of 653 posts
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#592Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple of things I've noticed here at Aldi in Ireland. Particularly interested in the psychological aspects: - The packing area (after the till) is quite small. This means that if you're not packing quickly and putting items back into the trolley then the till operator will have to stop scanning because of the backlog. They will often make subtle eye-contact (with a smile) when they have to stop, this puts the shop…
This is not the packing area though. In Aldis you are generally not expected to pack at the till at all. What should be happening is that you put all your shopping right back into the trolley, then take it away and bag your stuff at your pace at the window ledge, getting out of the way of next shoppers. I don't know about Ireland, but in the UK there's been obviously some backlash from the customers who aren't used t…
> This is not the packing area though.
Yeah but if you pack fast enough and have your bags already open on the trolley then you can it done at the till.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#593I wonder if eating food from these super cheap places will shorten your life span compared to other more expensive and focused on healthy places. Basically, sure cheap is good, but how less or more healthy are these cheap supermarkets comparing them to on quality and healthiness metrics?
The quality of Aldi products - at least here in Germany - has been assessed time and time again and the result is usually: Same quality, different packaging. That's the whole point. Aldi cuts everything that's not needed, but they don't cut corners at the product.
Great to hear! That's really good news: hopefully is the same thing in the US, about product quality! I used Aldi in London, UK but always felt weird about it, could never understand how they could have such low prices. This article and comments opened my eyes!
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#594> 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 g…
This is my experience as well in Germany. Fruits and vegetables are also quite tasteless. Some common items are simply missing. I'm afraid same will happen in US once the initial hype and attention to the details wear off and ROI considerations kick in. Or maybe it will work out great - Trader Joe's is an amazing example of that.
FYI: those looking for quality vegetables in Germany buy at the "market" (traditional place with sellers and producers coming with trailers once or twice a week). Maybe not anymore in Berlin, where this tradition may have been stopped during the time when the city was isolated from its surrounding agricultural suppliers (west), or vegetables were only available through "Konsum"-style socialist unit stores, if at all (east).
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#595In addition to being the cheapest, I'm often impressed by the quality of some of Aldi's pantry staples. Specifically, I'm blown away by their onions. I buy a bag of onions every 1-3 weeks. Since I can't individually inspect every onion in the bag, I'm resigned to the fact that anywhere from 10-30% of the onions will be unusable when I start to cut into them and find the rot. This is true of pretty much every grocer I…
Kind of an interesting comment because growing up the comment I always heard from people was "Avoid fresh produce at Aldi" because it had a reputation for being bad.
I love the $0.33 Hass Avocados Aldi’s has. They’re the same quality as Target’s but better than Walmart’s (which isn’t saying much).
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#596I am surprised that noone mentioned about the bottle collectors phenomenon in Germany. [1] Basicly you pay a deposit (.25 eur for plastic ones, 0.08 for glass.) for each beverage you buy and then sell those bottles back in supermarkets. This is maybe the easiest and most efficient way to force people to recycle. Are you lazy to do that or you don‘t have a place when you finish your beer walking in the street?[2] Then…
The drugs thing is only Berlin, at least in Germany. Drinking everywhere (though not at all times) is normal in all of Germany AFAICT. It's legal and nobody cares if you still behave.
Drug selling and smoking pot in the public (or even schools) is also not uncommon in other major cities in Germany eg. Hamburg, Frankfurt, Köln, etc. Hamburg has areas near the habour feeling quite extraterritorial in this respect. Munich I don't know; it's a much cleaner place than those other cities. Though drinking beer there and going to the Biergarten is kind of their way of living, and it's certainly a relaxed place with respect to nudity, love affairs, and sex.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#597Earlier 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…
Surely that sort of thing is relatively easy to identify and use the data to adjust the relative quantities per pack?? All this flavour sells first, lets put more of that flavour in each box for people to select their purchase from? Maybe, people return to get the Tikka, resulting in more sales??
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Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#598I'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…
So much of that is standard in Ontario (or all of Canada, I don't know). I hate coins for carts. I don't carry currency. Now I have to carry coins. Also they're irritating to handle while also handling my kids. Finally, they make me feel untrusted. Because some classless people walk home with carts and dump them in a ditch, I'm no-longer trusted not to do the same.
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#599Earlier 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).
Euro here, I don't think chasing the bottom of the barrel is worth celebrating. Also, Germany has the worst standard of grocery stores (I'd prefer grocery stores in general from neighboring France, Switzerland etc) due to their assortment and quality of products - and Aldi and Lidl are responsible for that.
Germans who can afford it buy only basic stuff at discounters. Fresh vegetables are bought at traditional grocery stores or markets, bread is bought at a bakery, and meat at a butcher, etc. though these latter two professions are heavily in decline in the last 20 years. Comparisons with France and Italy are unfair; these are in a league of their own with respect to food quality (at a price, though).
Re: Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets
#600Earlier 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…
I’ve heard They call it three tiered shopping here in Germany - 70% in Aldi, the rest in an upper level discounter (sic) and the delicious or rare stuff at a specialist store or a marketplace.