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{"id":873,"date":"2013-08-31T14:45:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/i-love-aldi-is-that-so-wrong.html"},"modified":"2013-08-31T14:45:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T14:45:00","slug":"i-love-aldi-is-that-so-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/i-love-aldi-is-that-so-wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"I love Aldi. Is that so wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I was surfing around and came across this:\u00a0 Do you know who owns Trader Joe\u2019s?<\/a> in the Freakonomics blog.\u00a0 The author was shocked, just shocked to learn that Trader Joe\u2019s was owned by Aldi, because Trader Joe\u2019s is the best store in the universe, well worth driving 20 miles for (as attested to by commenters) and Aldi is, well, Aldi.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there are a few things Aldi doesn\u2019t do well: most notably chocolate bars have historically been lousy, although the dark chocolate was just fine the other day, and milk chocolate in smores garnered no complaints.\u00a0 Produce can also be iffy and requires some scrutiny before purchase.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t expect to get all your groceries there, depending on your meal plan and list for the week.\u00a0 If you\u2019re an organic-only buyer, the selection is also slim.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what Aldi does well:<\/p>\n

Their food is cheap, due to a lot of efficiencies in how they sell:\u00a0 limited selection, private label, simplified stocking (box-on-a-shelf), self-bagging, the cart-deposit system, bar codes all over the product so check-out is lightning fast.\u00a0 (They used to be cash-only, until the advent of debit cards.)<\/p>\n

In general, they don\u2019t sacrifice quality for price.\u00a0 The produce isn\u2019t great, but my local Aldi, at least, is located next to a small grocery that specializes in meat and produce (Valli Produce<\/a>), and I often combine\u00a0a trip to both stores, so that\u2019s not an issue.\u00a0 Most of their private label food is perfectly up-to-snuff, and they have some name-brand items, mostly for items where they don\u2019t consider the private-label option to be good enough or consumers really want the brand (e.g., they recently started stocking Coke and Charmin, and have carried Colgate toothpaste for a while).\u00a0\u00a0 They also have a mix of basic and \u201cupscale\u201d items in a given section.<\/p>\n

They source internationally, so they\u2019ll feature Italian imports during Italian week, and German imports (Nuernburger sausages, schnitzel, etc.) during German week.<\/p>\n

They periodically have some really good special purchases.\u00a0 I got my French fry baking pan there (made in Germany), and my kitchen scale, and my car jump-starter (which worked, when I ran down the battery and unexpectedly put it to the test).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

They pay their people well (the help-wanted poster they periodically have up shows a starting wage of $12.85 plus benefits) and even treat them well (Ann Althouse might beg to differ, but I expect their employees appreciate the swivel stool so they\u2019re not on their feet all day), made possible in part by the low staffing their stores require, and an expectation, it seems to me, that their employees take more initiative, stocking when it\u2019s quiet.<\/p>\n

Fun fact:\u00a0 Aldi is global.\u00a0 Wikipedia will tell you all about the two Albrecht brothers who started the chain, had a dispute and split up the globe between them.\u00a0 Germany, too, is split, between Aldi North and Aldi South.\u00a0\u00a0 But the products are generally not the same (they had an American week during our stay in Germany, but didn\u2019t have any of the things that I missed from the US, except maybe donuts, or was it bagels?).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In the US, Aldi stands alone \u2014 it has no competitors who follow the same business model.\u00a0 But in Germany, there are lots of Aldis \u2014 Lidl, Plus, Penny Markt, and others, all of which feature primarily private labels, limited selection, small sized-stores, and special purchases (and the special purchases are a bigger part of the store and are bigger-ticket and of greater variety than in the US).\u00a0 They vary in the extent to which they offer fresh meat and fresh milk (as opposed to the UHT \u201cshelf milk\u201d).\u00a0 But some Aldi-specific things in the US are standard in German supermarkets (and I suspect elsewhere in Europe):\u00a0 the quarter deposit, the\u00a0seated cashier, the bag-your-own (in fact, Aldi was a bit classier, in offering a packing counter rather than requiring that you frantically try to bag as the cashier scans, or bag while standing at your car in the parking lot).\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"