Aldi, a brutally efficient grocery chain, is upending America's supermarkets • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by mft_ » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #489

hannob wrote: post #478

Earlier 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.

Living in Switzerland, I often choose to shop for groceries in Germany! Better prices and (much) better range in Hieber. (Although agree that France usually has both beaten.)

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

#512

Post by mft_ » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #495

hannob wrote: post #478

Earlier 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.

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.

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

#513

Post by DominikPeters » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

eredengrin wrote: post #439

ddebernardy wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot another important bit: the pickup area after their conveyor belt is one of the shortest out there, which forces customers to pack in a hurry so as to keep up with how fast the cashier is going. Speaking for myself, it's the part that annoys me most when I shop at one. I get why they designed their POS it, but it's just obnoxious for the elderly and for parents with by small children. It would seem simple e…

I've been to quite a few Aldis and the flow in all of them is that the items get scanned and immediately placed in a cart, then there's a separate bagging area (a large counter along the wall near the exit door, a couple feet across from the cashier section) to actually move the items from your cart into your bags however you please. Are there Aldi stores which don't work like this? I can't imagine trying to bag fast…

In all countries I've seen, except the U.S., Aldi cashiers move items into a small buffer area, and the customer then transfers them back into their cart, in sync with the cashier. In some non-German countries (e.g. UK), customers often don't cooperate or are slower than the cashier, which reduces efficiency. The U.S. system is different, where the cashier directly pushes items into the cart, and also there seems to be a weird cart-switch going on, where you get the cart of the person who used to be in front of you. My guess is that Aldi couldn't educate U.S. customers that they have to work in sync with the cashier, and then they came up with this solution.

U.S. checkout shape: https://www.trbimg.com/img-589b8178/turbine/ct-aldi-expansio...

Non-U.S. checkouts: https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/gallery/media/852/15994-... http://www.wochenanzeiger-muenchen.de/media/archive/wsp/5634...

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

#514

Post by mlok » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

The best quality/price laptops I've bought in the last couple of decades were from Aldi (their brands : Medion and Lifetec) It took 5 years for the competition to reach the same offering at that price. (That was in 2002, now it's less spectacular) I kept using these laptop for 5-7 years...

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

#515

Post by pgeorgi » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

Odenwaelder wrote: post #506

davrosthedalek wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re barcodes, in Germany, in the beginning, the cashiers were trained enough that they could actually enter the UPC from memory faster than scanning the item. Later, they added the barcodes on all sides which increased the speed even more. The quarter in the cart thing is very common in Germany even at high end supermarkets. The higher overhead compared to the US makes it very hard to higher people for this kind of jo…

They didn't enter the barcodes from memory, they entered the price of the item from memory. That alone is a feat, though.

Back then they had much less variation in inventory and very limited price groups: all products fit into the ~10 tiers they had, ranging from 0.19 to 3.99 or so.

The increased variation in inventory and the scanners came at about the same time, and they only did that when they figured out how to keep their famous checkout speed. (and it's still slightly slower than it was back then)

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

#516

Post by username90 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

JBReefer wrote: post #276

djrogers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of ~80M hourly wage workers, only ~500k of them are paid minimum wage. Given the size of the workforce and the fact that starter jobs do exist, that's not 'so many' at all.. [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm

People outside the US tend to not understand how unbelievably wealthy the country is. I’ve posted stats, you can check my history, but accounting for cost of living and taxes there are no states as poor as wealthy EU countries on average. If you ever find an Italian, talk to him about life in small towns. People are just tired of hearing about the USA because of our cultural domination, and because the media only pla…

Italy is not a typical "wealthy EU country".

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

#517

Post by davej » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

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…

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 shopper under pressure to pack quicker. I'm a fast packer so it doesn't affect me but I've seen it with other people.

- The till operator will ask you "Cash or Card" before you have finished packing. Another nudge to hurry you on to the next stage.

- They will open a new till the second the queue goes beyond the edge of the conveyor belt. Often they will open up the till for just one customer and then close it again as the queues have subsided. I've seen a large variance in this though, some Aldi's are lazer-like, others are more laid-back.

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

#518

Post by edvald » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

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…

Here's a fun fact to add to the mix: Aldi's gin is one of the best in the world, and cheap to boot. And they're pretty good at various other spirits and beverages too. Do they carry those in the US?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/aldi...

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

#519

Post by INTPenis » Sat, May 18, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

>Shoppers need a quarter to rent a shopping cart. Plastic and paper bags are available only for a fee. And at checkout, cashiers hurry shoppers away, expecting them to bag their own groceries in a separate location away from the cash register.

This just described how I've been shopping here in Sweden since the 90s.

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

#520

Post by dmos62 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:05 AM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #489

hannob wrote: post #478

Earlier 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.

In Lithuania food is so expensive that there's a joke that it's cheaper to drive to Germany to shop. That's a bit of a hyperbole (German border is about 1000km away), but it's definitely cheaper to shop in Poland.