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

Aldi's Barcode Strategy

motherjones.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 274 posts

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#121

Post by peteretep »

germanier wrote: post #23
chronial wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone has their own strategy of how to place items onto the line to slow down the cashier at just the right moment. I am German and and I've never heard of this ^^. You just put the items on the belt in the order that they should go in the bag, then you can pack very quickly.

> in the order that they should go in the bag That's one of them. Even that is something that you don't usually do outside Germany. To get to the next level I recommend to put weighted produce to the end or just after items that are not straightforward to pack.

    > > in the order that they should go in the bag
    > is something that you don't usually do outside Germany
That's a basic sign of civilization, after workable plumbing and provision of healthcare.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#122

Post by nickpsecurity »

tuna-piano wrote: post #97

I wonder why a large retailer like Walmart doesn't start incentivizing their suppliers to do this as well? Some math. -Assume a fixed 120 customers an hour -Assume each customer buys 20 items -1 minute for customer to pay + 1 minute total scanning time for all items = 30 customers / cashier / hour (4 cashiers needed) -Assuming additional barcodes double the scanning time (seems reasonable to me from my experiences at…

The suppliers consider the packaging to be a form of marketing/branding. They want it to look a certain way with key information, regulated or marketing, on various parts of it. The goods at my local grocer are packed with all kinds of info and graphics. Store brands often do the same thing. Customers love it much like they love variety on the shelves, symmetrical presentation, and interesting displays.

Aldi, like Costco, aims for a "no frills" segment that basically doesn't care how they place looks. They want to go in there, fine exactly what they need, get it cheap, and get it fast. This lets them do things like just drop boxes instead of neatly arrange products or cut beauty/info out of packaging in favor of barcodes. Ugly stuff that gets other segments to stop shopping at a place.

So, there's a few tradeoffs that apply before we even think about a company pushing vendors to do it.

Note: "Walmart offers their suppliers." They're same suppliers in many, but not all, cases. There's one or more companies that literally do nothing but put different names on the same stuff to make it look otherwise. Dirty, industry secret. ;)

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#124

Post by mdip »

noipv4 wrote: post #3

I wonder if this system can introduce miscounting or double-counting of an item? Maybe that is why the cashier at Aldi moves through items so quickly.

In almost a decade of shopping there this has never happened to me and I'm one of those bastards that reads the receipt as I'm boxing the groceries before I leave.

I joked with a cashier about this, once ... she said, deadpan, "it beeps when it scans". I'm guessing they're listening for two beeps when they're expecting one? The store keeps stats on the cashier's times so I'd imagine there's some training and probably some things only an Aldi cashier could speak to about how they manage to be quick, accurate and deal with the 30 or so customers a day who (used to) come in expecting to pay with a credit card (they're now accepted at Aldi in the US).

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#125

Post by stuaxo »

shostack wrote: post #102
mdip wrote: post #101

I've been an Aldi fan for more than a decade, buying almost all of my family's groceries there (four kids, it's cheap and doesn't require figuring out what is really on sale this week vs. what is really over-priced this week, or messing with Coupons). The quality of most of their products meets or exceeds that of the name brands[1] except in a few circumstances (their equivalents to Cheerios and Frosted Mini Wheats a…

The sitting thing is common in England (and perhaps elsewhere in Europe). It definitely stood out to me when I was visiting.

Yup, basically all food stores are sitting, but clothing shops all seem to be standing, weirdly.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#126

Post by nickpsecurity »

germanier wrote: post #85
open-source-ux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Aldi and Lidl are blasting through other super market chains with their low cost, high quality goods" Yes, and no. In the UK, I'm glad that Aldi and Lidl are challenging the larger supermarkets, but I would hate to see a situation where a race to the bottom on price means consumers have less choice across the entire supermarket sector. By choice I don't mean 20 brands of ketchup, I mean - to give just one example -…

The race to the bottom in Germany has created a market where food is of good quality but not great. Larger supermarkets do have quite a bit of selection but it's not as good as the stuff you can get in a French or British store. You can get a fair selection of spices in stores other than Aldi or Lidl but sometimes I have the suspicion that it's only the third-class that is left after the stores in neighboring countri…

"When they lowered the milk price by one fourth to 46 cents recently (which is way too low to cover production cost) all other chains responded within a few hours for their store-brands."

They tried this in my area maybe last year. Aldi dropped the price of milk and some other stuff to ridiculous prices. It went from around $2 to $0.60-0.70 at Aldi with Walmart, Kroger, etc following by dropping to $0.99. Aldi ships milk on racks with little else in their dairy selling that fast. Competitors, that I'm aware, all hand stock milk with tons of other products selling fast. Employees were exhausted from wave after wave hitting the milk section and so much milk stored that they couldnt get to other products. Convenience store owners were also posing as regular customers to buy basket loads of it over course of a day despite policy of 2 per customer. Results were so devastating to big players they backed off and didn't price war Aldi again in my area. So far. Milk went back up.

I thought it was hilarious they'd even try given they're "as much overhead as possible" organizations going against an essentially "zero overhead" organization. What did they think would happen? Lol...

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#127

Post by pingec »

germanier wrote: post #17
skrebbel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Usually they scan items faster than you can bag them. The area after the scanner is very small and takes only few items so you have to move fast. I saw below that US Aldi cashiers put the items into a grocery cart. That doesn't happen in Germany as you are expected to do that yourself. Everyone has their own strategy of how to place items onto the line to slow down the cashier at just the right moment.

Well here in Slovenia I see this approach does not fly with old people. They will simply take their time to bag their stuff properly. What is the cashier going to do but wait? Throw stuff on the floor?

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#128

Post by coredog64 »

elchief wrote: post #30

I noticed at line in Costco the cashier's assistant rearranged by stuff on the belt to have the barcodes facing up and in the same direction. Costco could probably save some money by putting barcodes on every side of everything.

It's pretty easy to do this yourself as you put the items onto the conveyer, with large items in the cart at least getting the UPC code up.

I do this at WalMart when I'm in a hurry.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#129

Post by gumby »

tricolon wrote: post #60
gumby wrote: post #7

Thanks for footnoting Dallas. Aldi being German I thought of a different example: that approach is how we ended up with France, Germany and Lorraine (of the famous Alsace-Lorraine fights between F & G). It was the three sons of Charlemagne...still very visible today!

It was the three sons of the son of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Verdun

Thanks, memory can be a bit leaky at times.

Re: Aldi's Barcode Strategy

#130

Post by Spooky23 »

skrebbel wrote: post #47
res0nat0r wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the shopping cards have a small chain that attaches to the cart in front of it. You unlock the cart by sliding in a quarter so you can use it while shopping. Since people want their quarter back they have to return the cart to the store. Great solution to eliminate a bag boy sweeping up carts from the lot all day IMO. Also way back when ALDI didn't even have barcode scanners to save money. There was a person typ…

> Also the shopping cards have a small chain that attaches to the cart in front of it. Wait, there are supermarkets that don't have that? How does it work? Do people just leave the shopping carts standing around on the parking lot? Not cynical, geniunely wondering how that works. Anyway, afaik virtually all supermarkets in Europe have that system. I'm pretty sure Aldi didn't invent it.

In the US, only Aldi and some urban based supermarkets where homeless people and drunks will run off with the carts use them.

More often these days, they just put an electronic wheel lock on the front wheel to disable the cart when it leaves the lot.

Post reply on HN