Comment by linkmotif | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linkmotif | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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