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

311–320 of 653 posts

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

#311

Post by adventured »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #278
notahacker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The most notable thing about Aldi (and similar competitor Lidl) from a UK perspective is that they pay above average for comparable supermarket jobs and reduce staffing accordingly. But I remember putting coins into slots for a trolley (and reclaiming them!) when I was young enough to be sitting in the child seat nearly 30 years ago, long before Aldi was a factor in the UK market. Is this really an innovative co…

The only "innovation" with the trolleys is that USA used to be a wealthy enough country that it was OK to pay cart collectors. It's not a stupidity thing, it's a poverty thing.

That's an entirely incorrect premise. Every Walmart store has cart collectors. You can see them working throughout the day, collecting carts. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world and employs by far the most people, and they still do it.

Besides, the US is inflation adjusted wealthier today than it has ever been at any other point in its history.

On the poverty front, US poverty is dramatically lower than it was in 1960, and homelessness is near record lows. If you go back to ~1960-1973, the falsely perceived peak of US wealth, it was much worse to be poor in the US. In every possible regard a poor person was worse off in the US prior to 1980, than they are today. That's due to a massive expansion of the US welfare state over that time, which has led to many improvements. That includes healthcare (universal healthcare for the bottom 25% didn't exist; even in the 1980s far fewer people were covered), housing, food security, disability programs, et al.

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

#312

Post by callalex »

eunoia wrote: post #281
jonas21 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they know exactly what they're doing. Those soda deals are usually loss leaders, i.e. the store takes a loss on every 12-pack they sell, but make it up in all of the other stuff you buy now that you're in the store. If they can get you to come into the store and not buy the soda, that's a great outcome. Of course, if that happens too often, you'll stop going, so it's a balance. They've probably figured out ho…

I don’t understand how the soda display is supposed to pull in new shoppers. Americans tend to drive to the grocery store in my experience. To me, this means most people committed to shopping at the store long before they got there and saw the soda display.

It’s the driving aspect that adds the competitiveness. If you’re driving, a 15 minute drive can get you to a lot of different stores with the same amount of effort.

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

#313

Post by lotsofpulp »

task_queue wrote: post #146
madengr wrote: post #90

Expensive cars in the Aldi’s parking most likely means a fat car loan, not an indication of wealth.

Getting a fat car loan is much easier if your credit is good, you aren't in debt, and your income is relatively high. It's an indicator of relative wealth.

Car's are easy to repossess, it's really not too risky to lend out a car and you don't need to substantiate much more than a half decent income and history of timely payments.

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

#314

Post by freeflight »

lqet wrote: post #284
hobofan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts What's the alternative? Growing up in Germany I've literally never seen it any other way.

Most of the IKEAs I have been to in Germany don't do this. They have a couple of poorly payed workers who do nothing else all day than collect carts from the parking space.

Tho IKEA works on a different scale compared to most grocers in Germany, their stores are always extremely busy, particularly on Saturdays and they handle a lot bigger wares which means customers having a trolley, sometimes even multiple of them is a more regular occurrence.

With that kind of throughput and the involved logistics of bigger pieces handed out on a trolley at the order counter, introducing the money deposit for the trolleys would massively slow down everything, possibly creating waiting lines at trolley stations as they sometimes happen during busy times at grocers.

At least the employes collecting the carts have electrical little pushing cars, enabling them to push impressively long "snakes" of trolleys.

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

#315

Post by thaumasiotes »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #273
tylerhou wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that retail companies are not looking at data already? Target was (in)famously able to predict that a teenager was pregnant before she herself knew based on her shopping habits. It's entirely possible that retail companies are already following a close to optimal strategy (don't sell too many items at such a low price because they're a loss leader?).

That's not what happened, and you should reflect on what made you think such an absurd claim is true. Target noticed she was pregnant before her father noticed. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

> That's not what happened, and you should reflect on what made you think such an absurd claim is true.

OK, that's not what happened, but I don't see why you're calling the claim absurd. It is unusual-but-routine for women to present with health complaints that are caused by their own pregnancy, without necessarily having realized they were pregnant. Sometimes that health complaint is "I'm in labor". (To get to that point, you have to be really fat, but it does happen.)

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

#316

Post by adventured »

rsynnott wrote: post #301
chodeboy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People leave there carts in the lots and workers collect them

Even in places with high employment and minimum wage?

Yes. Essentially every traditional Walmart and Target store in the US does it that way, regardless of high employment and minimum wage.

Walmart as one example has a motorized cart mover. The employee collects and stacks the carts into a line, backed by the motorized unit, and then can just gently guide the whole flock of carts and it moves along with little human effort. It enables the employee to move dozens of carts at a time across the parking lot without very much physical risk of injury.

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

#317

Post by osrec »

bunderbunder wrote: post #304
bunderbunder wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a quarter to free one from its chain.

OK, I'm genuinely curious, why the downvotes? Did I accidentally invoke some sensitive imagery?

Not sure, but perhaps because it's not actually a pun?! At least I still don't get it.

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

#318

Post by freeflight »

orthoxerox wrote: post #128
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…

TIL you can call American stores. Why do people do that?

To ask if they have something specific you are looking for without you having to physically get there and check yourself?

With products that are in high demand, you can even get stuff reserved.

I'm not even American, and I've done both of these.

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

#319

Post by dithering »

Torwald wrote: post #267
justin66 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main reason I have always heard mentioned why they have a deposit is that shopping carts are really expensive and they don't want people to take them home, have teens do silly things with them etc. I'm sure the deposit is just to encourage people to put the carts back where they belong, reducing the amount of work staff need to do outside the store. If you're going to steal a shopping cart, the quarter won't fa…

Yep, that's the real reason. Introduced first in France and not by Aldi.

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...

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

#320

Post by mamon »

wahern wrote: post #235
orthoxerox wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they do have them. They know phrases like "Unexpected item in bagging area".

If the automatic checkout counters even look like they have a scale I won't waste my time. Not once have I made it out without the machine requiring an override, no matter how carefully I place and scan items. Thankfully it seems the scales are becoming less common.

I refuse to use self-checkout on principle: I am not doing any unpaid labor for some corporation, I already have a job.
Post reply on HN