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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

In addition to being the cheapest, I'm often impressed by the quality of some of Aldi's pantry staples. Specifically, I'm blown away by their onions. I buy a bag of onions every 1-3 weeks. Since I can't individually inspect every onion in the bag, I'm resigned to the fact that anywhere from 10-30% of the onions will be unusable when I start to cut into them and find the rot. This is true of pretty much every grocer I've ever shopped at, with some faring worse than others (I remember almost half of the onions I'd get from an average bag at Target were unusable). Not so at Aldi's. I can buy a bag and every onion in the bag will have a nice, firm skin that feels fresh and tight when peeled, rather than old and slimy.

I suspect it's probably shelf life more than anything else--if they keep just enough stock of them that they're constantly being bought and restocked, they don't have time to sit on the shelf and wilt.

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A friend of mine worked for a logistic company and he told me many times that dealing with Aldi was a nightmare for them because they were extremely demanding:

very thin profit margin, tough quality checks (when delivering the items to the warehouses the checks were done on many more samples and in a much more detailed way than what other supermarket chains did) and if the truck arrived at the warehouse anytime after the agreed delivery time you were basically screwed (ranging from at least having to provide a discount to the whole delivery being rejected therefore having to find another chain willing to buy it or just throw it away).

All this might as well explain (additionally to your "shelf life") the good & cheap onions.

I'm an onion lover - Go onions! :)

(ps: this is just a neutral comment - so far I mostly ignored Aldi, excluding the exercise bike I bought from them which is still working perfectly ~3 years later)

High standards and tight margins? Sounds like Apple.

Tight margins and Apple don't belong in the same sentence

They do share an intense attention to detail though, Ikea is similar in many ways.

The attention to detail isn't always a good thing, though. Sometimes, they see the tree (wow, a thinner display cable) instead of the forest (this hinge has to flex thousands of times). Other times, they'll see a much thinner keyboard, but miss that debris could break the mechanism entirely. Even other times, they can forget to enable proper thermal controls or network drivers. Or, they can make sure your phone doesn't charge unless it wakes first. Bugger.

I mean, compared to $400 HPs or $200 Samsungs, there's definitely more attention to detail, but that isn't exactly a very fair comparison.

I'd argue that the whole consumer electronics industry is negligent, including Apple.

I think they’re referring to the suppliers perspective.

Correct.

Costco has similar rules now re deliveries; They are tightly controlled by HO.

Most markets here sell onions loose, so one is able to select only nice ones. The stores in the city are small and heavily trafficked, so the onions tend to turn over quickly. I suspect the stocking crews also eliminate the damaged onions before putting them in the bin.

Kind of an interesting comment because growing up the comment I always heard from people was "Avoid fresh produce at Aldi" because it had a reputation for being bad.

If I have learned one thing in a lifetime, it's that freshness depends on each shop. There is no consistency even for a chain of supermarkets in the same city. It's like each one has its own supply chain.

I suspect it's as much varying demand patterns and quality of store management as supply chain.

I love the $0.33 Hass Avocados Aldi’s has. They’re the same quality as Target’s but better than Walmart’s (which isn’t saying much).

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