Looking forward to shopping this weekend at ALDI, a Germany-based, no-frills grocery chain. It has the reputation and feel here in the States of being an IKEA meets Walmart: Although there are cashiers, you have to bag your own groceries; the food, mostly staples such as canned goods, produce, milk and bread, is mostly ALDI-branded; it has a warehouse feel, where food is stacked in pallets and replaced when only the pallets are empty; they sell plastic bags, but you can bring your own; and you have to pay a $0.25 deposit into a machine for a cart, which you get back when you return.
That last one sounds really cheap, but it's (1) common practice in Europe, and (2) meant to discourage lazy people from abandoning their carts in the parking lot, which takes resources to go track down. I'm definitely all for that one; it drives me nuts to see people leave their empty shopping carts in whatever space next to their car they can find instead of walking a short 10 paces to put it in the space clearly marked "Cart return."
The chain is trying to make a big move in the U.S., with 13 new stores in Central Florida, and from what's been going on in the economy lately, they've picked a strategic time to do it.
Downside: From what I've read on its Wikipedia page, ALDI started out with a rep like Food Lion, a place only poor people with food stamps would shop. Since most of their food is generic, ALDI brands, it also had a rep for being poor quality, a la "Dixie Darling."
On the flip side, you can say the same thing about Walmart, which hasn't exactly suffered for being low-cost. And with the European economy being dragged down by ours, ALDI's rep has been elevated a bit.
Ooze Note: Fresh Graduate, Rotten Thoughts
9 years ago
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