The All American Aldi | Hacker News Reader

The All American Aldi

theawl.com

39 pointsbriandear65 comments

There’s a lot wrong with this piece, starting from the subhead:

> unfriendly German efficiency.

Aldis are some of the friendliest grocery stores I know. Their employees always seems happier than employees other places. And my guess is because they treat them well. The stores close at a reasonable hours, are always closed on holidays. My guess is they pay employees reasonably too, because the job postings always list decent seeming wages.

> In New York City, the company’s only location (for now) is on 117th on the banks of the East River.

Unless Queens is no longer in New York City, there has been and Aldi in Rego Park for years now. It’s a pretty good one too, right by Q train and Queens Mall.

> If you are at Aldi, it’s because you needed groceries and you went out to get them, not because you were tempted in by a cute box of chocolates,

Nonsense! What a bunch of BS this line. They sell awesome seasonal assortments of cookies and chocolates of all varieties, imported from Germany or USA local.

> The fact that Aldi is only starting to make concessions to US norms

What norms? Like giving all your money back to the man as soon as you get it?

And on and on and on this article.

The Awl... :( everything they touch is classist. Here they survey the poors who shop for food and their sad grocery store. Gross.

Agreed. I do like 95% of my grocery shopping at Aldi, and the remaining 5% are the few things I want that they simply don't carry.

The checkout is blazing fast, and supports contactless payments including Apple Pay and the Android ecosystem counterparts.

The prices are unbeatable. I can get small quantities of things at Aldi for lower unit prices than I can get at BJ's or Costco. Not by a bit, either. Often 20-25% cheaper, despite not buying in bulk.

There's no fripperies like bacon-wrapped scallops, bakery, couture frozen dinners, pre-made meals a la Wegman's, etc. Though if you cook, it has everything you need, and nothing you don't.

You want to see how to run a business lean? Aldi is the benchmark for supermarkets.

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I'd say the only negative is if you want good produce, you need to be there at open.

"The poors"? Grocery stores in black and (particularly) latino neighborhoods in Chicago --- ie, the poorest neighborhoods --- are nothing like this description of Aldi, or any Aldi or TJ's I've ever been in. Most have better produce than Whole Foods, a giant meat counter, and minimal, off-brand packaged foods. You cannot buy a $3 bottle of richly floral dark extra virgin olive oil at Del Rancho Market, and the greens are not shrinkwrapped in plastic.

I'm sure the demographics of Aldi customers is sharply lower-income than that of Whole Foods, but I dispute the idea that Aldi gets to play the standard-bearer of the working class.

That’s at least something the article got right: at least in Germany Aldi has an unbelievably broad target audience. It’s quite common to see a Porsche parked in front of an Aldi. But you will also see plenty of struggling families. There is some general perception that Aldi has very high quality products (more often than not confirmed in tests) and they have garnered a lot of trust. But yes, if you look for the very cheapest you might have to look elsewhere (such as local stores around immigrant communities)

Aldi has a pretty good penetration in working class Chicago neighborhoods and unlike Whole Foods or Mariano’s that’s not new.

I don’t know what it means to be a standard bearer of the working class for a grocery store but Aldis has for a long time gone places others don’t & more notably stocked the same stuff in those locations as their more well heeled locations. That’s fairly rare for a national (or even large regional) chain.

I’d add that I find the description of Aldis as dingy & lowlight not matching my experience now or in the past.

I don't know what those words mean either. I guess I would just push back on the idea that a criticism of Aldi is necessarily a criticism of grocery stores for the working class.

Aldi in Chicago might be a west-side south-side thing? There aren't many south of Fullerton and west of Kedzie, but there are lots of grocery stores for black and latino markets, and they don't look (on the inside) that much like Aldi.

Certainly I don't have a problem with Aldi. They're better than Dominicks was, and in some ways more admirable as a business than Whole Foods.

(Shrug) the Aldis in Woodlawn was far and away the nicest grocery store in the neighborhood. I never noticed a tremendous difference between it and other grocery stores other than the “Moo & Oink” which was weird in its own special way.

no shrugs we must litigate this to its full conclusion i'm getting in the car now

What grocers do you go to?

I tend to do my primary shopping at Petes Freshmarket, frequently in Danny's Freshmarket (because it's close), and will rarely go into Marianos. The only time that I've had issues at Petes has been when I'm looking for Zuccini flowers or instant dry yeast. I've heard issues with Ceremak Produce. However, I've heard amazing things about Stans. (Although they don't have good parking)

Pete's for produce, Whole Foods for meat, Local Foods/Butcher and Larder for fancy meat. But prior to Pete's, which has a really good produce section, we'd routinely go to Del Rancho or Jimenez for produce.

My sense is: in terms of cost, Del Rancho is lower than Aldi, and serves a more downmarket clientele. But the tradeoffs Del Rancho makes are different from the tradeoffs Aldi makes.

“The poors” was said sarcastically.

I get that, but I think you can see my criticism of your comment is substantive, not just sniping your choice of words.

Just making sure.

> I'm sure the demographics of Aldi customers is sharply lower-income than that of Whole Foods, but I dispute the idea that Aldi gets to play the standard-bearer of the working class.

Well sure, if you're in a food desert with nothing, then yes, Aldi would be amazing. But as you write, Aldis are usually in places where there are other options, and in those places, yes, they attract the poorer crowd and yes they are the standard-bearer of the working class. That's been my non-empirical experience anyway.

They also attract people who are tired of being ripped off for commodity conventional food.

What I'm saying is that in the part of Chicago I live in, low-income people don't shop at Aldi as much as they shop at Mexican supermarkets, Save-a-Lot, and Wal-Mart. Those places have in a lot of ways the opposite design as Aldi: lots of produce, few house brands, no satisficing sops to more upscale shoppers, like secretly excellent cheap olive oil.

So my general point would be: you can't make a classist argument against critiques of Aldi without accounting for the fact that other inexpensive grocers don't follow Aldi's model either.

well I was saying this article was classist. I don’t see how other grocery models relate to this. The article was classist in the sense that it didn’t even seem to understand the nuances you’re describing. It just reduced Aldi to some 2nd world shopping experience (see my quotes for examples).

Anyway if you’re talking about Mexican groceries that focus on produce and meat we are already talking about apples and oranges with respect to Aldi because people shop at those places not just for price considerations but because that’s what they culturally want. As an immigrant myself I can say that arriving in the US it was bewildering and strange that people bought everything in a paper box that was just add water or microwave. Very alien and unsettling. None of that stuff is, you know, food. I feel like immigrants set up those kinds of stores because they want places to buy /food/.

I don't think you've adequately supported your argument that this article is classist. The popularity of grocery stores that "adhere to US norms" among lower-income shoppers would seem to refute that argument.

> The no-frills grocery chain is a perfect example of spare, unfriendly German efficiency.

“Spare” was the first indication for me that there was a lot wrong with this article.

The author probably shops exclusively at Whole Foods.

> unfriendly German efficiency

This is exactly how Aldi feels here in Bavaria. Prices are very low but you'll be asked to bag your purchases at the window to avoid delaying the checkout of the next customer.

A lot of stuff they sell doesn't taste great, especially vegetables.

> but you'll be asked to bag your purchases at the window to avoid delaying the checkout of the next customer.

I actually like that at Aldi there is space where I can bag my groceries unhurriedly. It's not that at other supermarkets in Germany you do have time at checkout.

> A lot of stuff they sell doesn't taste great, especially vegetables.

A lot of their stuff is just branded goods sold under the Aldi brand. There are actually lists [1, in German] where you can lookup which Aldi brand is which real brand. For example Aldi Belmont Cappuccino is the same as Cappuccino Nestlé.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.de/2014/11/05/marken-hinter-aldi-p...

> There are actually lists [1, in German] where you can lookup which Aldi brand is which real brand

Their supplier can (and does) change at any time without notice and may even vary regionally, even though the packaging is the same. It often helps to check the producer's address (always listed on the packaging) and see what other company in the same product space is nearby.

The same applies to the customer in front of you. I prefer them to be out of my way with their groceries, 3 kids and 2 carts when I'm trying to pack my stuff.

"Packing at the window" scales better than the alternative in Germany: to have the packaging area at the cashier's be split in two (#3 will have to wait until the kids of #1 decide whether they want their toy now or in the car).

The expectation of quickly bagging your stuff is the experience at literally every German grocery, certainly all the discounters and even the proper supermarkets like Edeka and Rewe. They're a bit slower and more patient at Karstadt, I suppose.

This is also the norm at grocery stores in central Asia -- you're expected to bag your food as it's scanned, and often you're expected to either bring your own bag, ask for (and pay for) some plastic bag, or be lucky and they have some form of bag at the end. Besides cultural differences, it also comes down to the fact that many people use baskets and the carts are essentially two carrying baskets fixed to a metal frame, in striking contrast to the US jumbo sized shopping cart, so you necessarily can't bring that much and can likely bag it yourself in a short timeframe.

Same in France. This is always a race between the cashier and you. The cashier is usually faster.

In Germany we had pretty much the same sentiment about Aldi in the 80s. Meanwhile in brick&mortar retail everything but discounters (Aldi, Lidl, ...) is downward trending for years.

> panettone freshly imported from Germany’s Christmas production lines

The sound of panettone alone should have been a dead giveaway that it is Italian.

Doesn't mean the German versions can't be good :) In Switzerland they usually import from Italy, but I couldn't tell the difference between a German, Swiss or Italian one blindfolded.

I just want to add that I’m not promoting Aldi here. It’s definitely not perfect in the bigger food economy picture. Aldi is part of the global race to the bottom in the food industry that touches many aspects of the material and social economy from farmers to consumers.

For example, I just heard someone bought a dozen eggs at an Aldi in Missouri for 44 cents. That’s crazy and disturbing. Imagine how much the farmers got on that sale. Imagine how the chickens producing those eggs live. Imagine the nutrient contents of those eggs compared to pasture raised eggs.

But the thing is that big name grocery stores selling conventional things sell the same eggs for a lot more money. If you’re going to shop conventional, it makes sense at least not to get ripped off.

As a German, this article kinda reads like a misconception about what Aldi is actually supposed to be and what it's doing right now: It's a discounter, always has been a discounter and now it's trying to be a "discounter with class".

You don't go to Aldi to get the biggest selection and all the big brands, you go to Aldi to pay less for your food because Aldi doesn't spend as much money on making "everything look nice and have the widest selection" compared to their competition, at least here in Germany, so they can undercut the competition with prices.

Recently Aldi Süd has started to change this, even in Germany. Stores are being renovated and made to look "fancier", with some added selection in wares, getting closer to other non-discounter supermarkets like Edeka and Rewe. At this point, Aldi exists on kind of a middle ground between the pure discounters like Netto and the "brand supermarkets" like Edeka.

A few years ago there was some Aldi anniversary, with accompanying editorial articles in the newspaper and stuff.

What surprised me was how many poor people expressed their gratitude to Aldi in the comment sections, saying that few companies did so much to enable them to life a dignified live by offering cheap but decent quality groceries.

Aldi is the main reason my (widowed & working) mother was able to budget our expenses to not let us know how little money we had, that in itself gives me the same feeling of gratitude.

I've come to realize this later on in life when managing my own finances how much of an impact shopping at Aldi must have made to my mother. We had good homecooked food whenever possible, 90% bought from Aldi. I still feel like a failure sometimes when I check my bank statement and see how much I spend on food bought elsewhere.

>I still feel like a failure sometimes when I check my bank statement and see how much I spend on food bought elsewhere.

Out of curiosity, why don't you shop there now?

I do, but not as often as I should.

Convenience and falling prey to marketing gets me to part with my hard earned cash too easily.

Perhaps Aldi stores in expensive parts of NYC ("It's not Amazon, it's the rent" in the last few days....) are dim and cramped like my midwestern mental image of a NYC bodega, but out here in the great wide open every Aldi I've been to is brightly lit, with wide aisles and shelving that's not stacked up to over my head. In a word, bright and roomy.

Aldi isn't a gourmet shop with dozens of varieties of truffle oil, but it doesn't pretend to be. Instead they have nice, bright, roomy stores that frankly I'd recommend as a first place to stop for anyone mobility impaired because everything is reachable (caveat: BYOScooter). It's entirely possible that some items they sell aren't up to the quality level of top-tier branded versions of the same thing, but they're decent quality at frequently excellent prices.

I think it depends on the age. I'm also in the Midwest, and the two older Aldi stores here that were built in the 90's are dim and cramped (they're both still open, and still that way today). They tend to look like this -> http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZNeZx43jXsM/TyoFKEU_9hI/AAAAAAAAKg... and http://cdn.arn.com.au/media/7139552/aldi-old-man.jpg

But the newer Aldi remodeled stores are bright and roomy and nice. They tend to look like this -> https://corporate.aldi.us/fileadmin/fm-dam/Media_Pages/Store...

What I was saying about aisle widths and shelf heights even applies to the older ones I've been in, and I've never been in one that I'd consider dim.

Regarding accessibility, I was surprised to learn the aisle in my nearby (recently renovated) Aldi is wide enough for 3 carts. It was particularly busy on one of my recent visits.

I recently got into an online argument with a woman because she claimed that eating healthy was more expensive than eating fast food or from chinese take outs . I countered that I feed two adults on $40 a week by shopping on the perimeter of the market and/or shopping at Aldi's. Cutting my diet down to basically fresh fruits/vegetables and poultry has really saved me a lot of money. My local Aldi's has a dozen eggs for less than $1 and I can get 6 chicken wings for $3! Aldi's has really hit the market and improved on the affordable market concept that places like Save-A-Lot mostly failed on.

>My local Aldi's has a dozen eggs for less than $1 and I can get 6 chicken wings for $3!

Maybe I have a local anomaly in egg prices, but I was picking those up for 37 cents/dozen all summer, then moved to a larger town (also in Iowa) and they moved up to about 60 cents/dozen.

Wow, U.S. egg pricing seems crazy to me. It's US$ 9.90/dozen in Switzerland at a normal nationwide store vs. US$ 5.90 at Aldi Suisse (both selling free-range Swiss eggs).

This can't be explained just by purchase power differences. Considering the conditions even for Swiss free-range chickens aren't good, are they particularly terrible for chickens laying 5 cent eggs? I couldn't find any information (not even pricing) on the Aldi US site.

I come from Iowa, which is by a large margin the largest egg producer in the country. It could be partially a locality thing (very little transportation).

Also of note, this last summer was very very rough for chicken production. Prices were very low compared to input costs, and chicken farmers were losing their shirts. Chicken renderers (mass killing of chickens when the price drops too much) were backed up for many weeks.

http://www.aeb.org/farmers-and-marketers/industry-overview

That's horrible. I just looked at some farming methods. Man, all the evils of humanity...

Caging has been illegal in Switzerland since 1992, that probably makes part of the price difference. So egg collection can be automated easily in a U.S. process (in states where cages are legal) but is harder to automate here. I would guess they still use nest boxes so there could theoretically be an automatic method from the nest box to a conveyor belt. I'll research if Switzerland hand-collects things, then the wage difference of whoever does that plus vastly more expensive land could explain the rest of the price.

There are pretty big differences in production methods: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-eggs-refrigerated-united-...

EU eggs seem a lot safer. Refrigerating eggs seems very strange.

> Aldi makes absolutely no effort to tempt through sensual delight. It’s a perfect example of spare, unfriendly German efficiency. All the goods are displayed on metal racks in their original cardboard shipping containers—no labor wasted on display; there are maybe two options for each type of product—no shelf space wasted on a tenth variety of cracker that is purchased by that one guy every month; employees can be found, more or less exclusively, at checkout, where they will ring you up but not provide you with bags or, god forbid, bag your groceries for you. Efficiency also applies to production, in that almost all the goods are house brands. Nothing extraneous comes between product and customer—hence the high quality of Aldi goods with incredibly low prices (show me another store with a dark, fragrant extra virgin olive oil for three dollars and change).

So... Costco? It feels like there's a lot of other options as far as places to buy food that the author doesn't seem to know much about.

Costcos are enormous warehouses located miles out in the suburbs. Aldi is a tiny store that you can probably walk to.

As a European it sounds like the article mixes up Aldi Sud and Nord.

Aldi Sud is a wonderful place compared to the (old) Aldi Nord.

I have no idea where/how they source their products, but in-store Aldi Sud feels quite high quality. With many dietary options and many common brands.

The only real difference to other stores being (almost) one brand per product. Which makes shopping so easy!

Oddly, it's the other way around in the US. Trader Joe's (Aldi Sud) is upscale and Aldi (Aldi Nord) is the downscale one (not that it's bad or anything).

As I understand it, from a second-hand but reliable recounting, in the foreign market (outside Germany), the two Aldi's have mostly divided the markets on a country basis. (One or the other will be present in a country, but not both.)

The large and rich U.S. is the exception, where the Aldi name is used by one of the two (from other comments here, Aldi Nord, I guess -- oops, another comment says Sued), while the other (Aldi Sued, then -- or Nord, it seems) is present through its Trader Joe's mark and model.

By me, the nearest Aldi is a dingy looking affair with a pretty small and limited selection. I don't mean of brands, but simply of products and produce. This may be just this particular location, which is kind of out of the way.

Trader Joe's has been very slowly expanding its store base, and those I find much more useful, though they are still small and don't have the range of coverage that a supermarket has. I've seen the same employees at those stores for years -- and years. And gotten to know some of them, to varying degrees. Their staff stick.

No. Aldi Nord owns TJ. Aldi Sud owns Aldi USA. It’s even in the article.

As an aside, it's interesting in that at least as stated, the brother split the biz over whether to deal in vice or not. They could not come to a compromise so split up the biz into north and south.

Exactly. Aldi Süd also doesn't leave things in big cardboard boxes but puts them properly on display.

I find that author tried to make some point but it is completely lost on me. My Aldi experience or American Supermarket experience differ from what he describes. Aldi has quality items and you are supposed to do the work of pick them up and package them. Prices are lower then other places.

Checkout is example of efficiency, I know their checkout people are paid much better then other places and it is clear why, they scan those things like a lightning.

>...I know their checkout people are paid much better then other places and it is clear why, they scan those things like a lightning.

I'm an industrial engineer. I love efficiency. I primarily shop at Aldi because the prices beat anywhere else and I love finding the little things they do to be efficient.

Only a couple employees at a time working, sharing all jobs as needed.

Conveyor belts long enough to hold approximately 1 cart of groceries. This lets everything get queued up for the checker.

Leaving the boxes with the product. One waste stream is manged by reuse then recycling by customers while also avoiding the cost of bags.

No local phone number publicly listed. Cuts calls out.

Barcode on most sites of product so they don't need to be in a specific orientation.

their POS is setup for speed. They can scan an item and type a quantity quickly. At other grocery stores I haven't seen this happen (probably partially because of the large number of similar but not identical items).

almost all produce is pre-weighed and price labeled, or by quantity.

By having only one of most products, they reduce waste from low-running products going bad.

*They don't stock every single thing you need. It's a bit annoying to not have Worcestershire sauce when you need it, but in my experience Aldi is nearby other shopping venues.

Also their pricing for spices cannot be beat. It's only about 18 basic spices carried, but I've never seen a cheaper price per unit.

There are no concessions, they are updating the stores in Europe all the same. Pictures from very early 2016:

http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/handel/aldi-mit-neuem-ladende...

Indeed - that bothered me about that article as well. Aldi in Germany has since a while recognized that customer expectations are evolving and that other supermarkets offer superior “feel” at similarly low prices. Hence the upgrade. Guess a bit of a similar story as McDonalds’s push for higher (perceived?) quality

They didn't really do that of their own accord, though. Their main competitor Lidl had started to chip away at their market share by upgrading their stores and offering a nice shopping experience. Furthermore, as the economy started to improve after the financial crisis, people became more demanding. We have actually seen a bit of an uptick in market share for the traditional grocery chains over recent years.

I find fascinating how Aldi split akin to how the Roman Empire split, "The separate Aldi companies came about 50 years ago: the brothers disagreed about some business practices and decided to split the company along geographic lines across Germany."

https://consumerist.com/2016/08/15/the-family-that-owns-trad...

I haven’t been to an Aldi in the US but the ones I’ve been in Europe have all been very barebones and the atmosphere reminded somewhat of communist grocery stores from when I lived in USSR.

Funny notice when I first came to US and visited Trader Joe’s I immediately wondered if it was owned by Aldi (it is). The concept is very similar (one product of each, no choice of brands) but executed very differently. Whereas Aldi is trying to be as cheap as possible, TJ seems to cater to urban hipsters. And yes, personnel is much friendlier too!

Also, in the Netherlands Aldi had the reputation of “Walmart” of employers. Many stories of poor working conditions like timed bathroom breaks, etc.

Aldi Netherlands is different (belongs to Aldi North) from Aldi USA (belongs to Aldi South).

In Germany the "Walmart" reputation belongs to Walmart (who withdrew from the German market because they couldn't exploit employees the way they could elsewhere), with Lidl being a close second.

With family having worked in HR in retail, I heard that they sometimes had staffing issues because Aldi outcompeted them all (incl. high-end clothing stores) on wages.

Aldi is a prime example why Walmart failed in Germany.

Article full of stereotypes. So nowdays costsavings are presented as german efficiency my fucking ass.

A few months ago I was shopping at Trader Joe’s, and having only recently learned of the Aldi connection, I asked my checker how it was working for a German grocer.

He had no idea. He’d been working there three years.

> Since it first opened its doors in Iowa in 1976, it has established 1,600 locations across the nation. Over the next five years, it announced in June, that number will jump to 2,500, putting its reach alongside that of Walmart and Krogers.

Ehh, it is currently in the same realm as Safeway (1300 stores). In 5 years, if all goes according to plan, it hopes to be closer to Kroger (2800 stores).

It is not, nor will it even come close in the next 5 years, to being a Walmart, who already has 4700 stores.

Particularlu given the love of the US for membership-based big box stores like Costco I also doubt a budget chain (that, last I checked, still charged you 25 cents for a shopping card), will become quite the “staple” Walmart or any other normal supermarket chain is.

They don't charge you for using a shopping cart, it's a refunded deposit to get people to return their carts to the cart storage areas.

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