Maybe this will start a trend of businesses letting their cashiers sit down.
The majority of checkouts at my local Aldi are self-service; I think Walmart might have started that trend.
It’s required by state law in California
I’ve seen a few cashiers at other places. Granted they were all older so maybe had a reasonable accommodation to sit, but maybe… Maybe…
Aldi is great. Walmart has been robbing small towns in America without competition for long enough. I hope more Americans shop at Aldi and save more money while getting healthier food at a fair price.
I drive 20 minutes out of my way to shop at aldi rather than win-dixie (which they’ve bought recently) down the street for my monthly large shopping.
Does Aldi provide better deals than Walmart?
I used to shop there, but the prices were comparable and everything went bad fast.
That is what fresh food not overloaded with preservatives will do. You should really make fresh produce shopping more of a daily activity as you need it. But not everyone has that kind of time understandably bi-weekly also doable for truly fresh produce along with you plan out your meals for the week
That is what fresh food not overloaded with preservatives will do.
What are you talking about? Kroger is not injecting their apples with preservatives.
You should really make fresh produce shopping more of a daily activity as you need it.
Are you fucking joking? You expect a single parent working two jobs to go shopping daily as well?
Calm down, that was a general statement that is true. If your circumstances don’t allow it, that sucks.
I gave an extreme example, but very few people’s circumstances at this point allow them to go shopping every day. Even people working a single job are far too exhausted by it at the end of the day to be expected to go shopping after work. If Aldi can’t sell vegetables that last more than a couple of days, people are less likely to shop there and more likely to shop at somewhere like Walmart. If for no other reason than sometimes you don’t get to cook as quickly as you want to and you end up losing more money on the cheaper vegetables than you would have if you just bought the longer-lasting ones.
Even back before supermarkets where you had to go to multiple individual shops to buy food, no one went to the greengrocer on a daily basis. That is not how vegetables are supposed to work.
I don’t comment often and I do know you Squid but you’re wrong on this. Aldi had great food and especially great produce. I’ve been going there for more than 3 years exclusively.
I wasn’t commenting on the vegetables at Aldi except going with what other people were saying about them I was talking about this, which I found to be ridiculous:
You should really make fresh produce shopping more of a daily activity as you need it.
That is beyond what most people should be expected to do and it is beyond what people have done historically and it’s just not how most vegetables and fruits work.
I’m not surprised that isn’t true of Aldi because it would be bad business to buy old produce that was on the edge of turning rotten.
Unfortunately, the American society is just not great for accommodating healthy living. Everything must be done by car and in bulk. And everything must last long because people also want to go once a week. So things are pumped full of unhealthy preservatives as gasses.
It’s not good.
Sure, but vegetables that only last a day or two has also never really been a thing for most vegetables we eat. Is there any Western country where people have to buy fresh vegetables every day?
If you actually continue on to read the entire message you’ll notice the part where I mentioned that not everyone has that kind of time
And my point was almost no one has that kind of time and that it’s not realistic to expect vegetables to only last a day or two when that has never historically been the case.
Edit: Since so many of you think vegetables only last a day after they’ve been picked- https://extension.sdstate.edu/storage-life-vegetables
I don’t they last a day but they shouldn’t last a month either.
Aldi’s produce ”going bad” is on par with my local farmer’s market.
So… like over a week. Which was my initial point to the person I replied to. You don’t have to buy vegetables every day unless you’re buying vegetables that are about to go off, which pretty much no reputable place sells.
everything went bad fast.
Yeah, that’s because the food is fresh and less treated than what most Americans are used to. Going bad fast is not necessary a bad thing.
Fresh is not necessarily better, there’s nothing wrong with frozen food if you don’t mind the texture. And no it’s not like Kroger is injecting preservatives in apples.
No, it’s because it’s old produce that is close to expiring.
The aldi simps here are insane, but another reason why I don’t take the masses seriously anymore.
I’m an Aldi simp too!!! Aldi is far superior to Walmart, I never expect my fruits and vegetables to last more than a week and Aldi is good with that. I will never buy produce or meat at Walmart, the things they do to their meat is disgusting. I buy most my non perishables from Walmart, Aldi for other things, and then Costco every couple of weeks. I’m also a Costco simp. In my experience to get the best quality and price you gotta go to multiple places.
Side note, season, time of year changes where produce is the best. Cucumbers in summer at Aldi where I live aren’t good.
Aldi is far superior to Walmart,
That’s a really low standard to measure against.
Aldi provides way better working conditions than Walmart, that’s for sure. Imagine being able to sit during a job that doesn’t require standing – in America!!!
I didn’t even know that was an option until I walked into an Aldi.
Almost everything at Aldi is private label, which is why it is cheaper (again you only find a few recognizable name brands). However, I will not by fresh foods from Aldi as most of the time as it goes bad fast. I do like their snacks and prepackaged deli stuff tho.
That’s what fresh food is, not filled with preservatives and processed garbage that contributes to chronic low grade inflammation
Is their food really “fresher” than Walmarts?
Can you provide any sources to back up that claim?
The fact it goes off quicker is the key piece of evidence. Obviously, they sell items in preserves too, they are a supermarket, and walmart will sell fresh items, but aldis main shtick and selection focus is “fresh, good quality and cheap”, but stocks vary a lot, so you need to be comfortable with some items not being available sometimes.
For example, I wanted cherry tomatoes last week, but they had none so I had to have piccolo tomatoes instead.
Lol
Learn canning and preserving like baba
Or just shop at Walmart.
Hell yeah. Aldi is the shit
smaller European entrant
I like how from the perspective of outsiders, Aldi is “small”. They’re huge here in Europe along with Lidl. The two make a meme of establishing shops next to each other wherever either exist.
I am glad that Aldi is setting up shops in US. The chain is pretty cheap though the food quality is okay compared to others. I haven’t really heard anything bad about Aldi so they are pretty good employers unlike many American shops like Walmart.
Where I am in the US all our supermarkets suck, and are over priced. Aldi offers a clean environment with inexpensive food at decent non farm stand quality. When your alternative is double the price in a run down store or Walmart. Aldi is a very nice alternative.
I really don’t think it takes much for Aldi to compete in a large part of the US market. Even if they’re not the best because we have so much of the worst in supermarkets.
IL native, so maybe its regional, but Aldi aint small here either xD
Not only are they everywhere, everyone i meet raves about the stark differences in prices between them and their other local stores.
Yeah they’re ALL over at least northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. And for the longest time, it was the only place I could find zero-carb bread that didn’t taste like garbage.
They’re not a small company but their locations do typically have a very small footprint compared to the typical US grocery store… Much lower square footage.
They’ve been in US markets for decades at this point. They just don’t have locations in every region of the US or so many locations even in the regions that they do exist as to be considered ubiquitous.
I had a cut of gruyere from there a few weeks ago that was top notch. They got some real bargains for what some people would see as luxury food.
The Aldi Brie is very good.
Aldi definitely isn’t small in the US. This is like calling Publix small just because you don’t live in Florida, or Love’s small just because you don’t live in the massive swath of the US they cover.
Aldi is fairly new to much of America. Kroger in America is much, MUCH bigger. And of course Walmart dwarfs both.
Its strange that they couldn’t get a hold of Denmark. They closed all their shops here last year, even shops that opened that same week! Must have been a very abrupt decision!
People will argue that it’s working in Switzerland. But, I don’t think so. They are a little cheaper on certain article. And, I don’t see lots of people there during the day.
Not in all of Europe, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Aldi in Czech Republic or Poland
They suck so much, im glad they closed all their stores in Denmark
We have better alternatives with equal or better prices etc.
Such as Netto
Scandinavian bubble I think
They trully were bad in Denmark though. Although they did get better just before they closed
Please come to Colorado!!! I have my Aldi’s quarter ready!
Please please please! Aldi’s would kill in CO, especially if the Kroger/Albertsons merger goes through. I kind of hope Aldi’s stays out of CO until we know if the merger will go through, though. Their presence would weaken the case against the merger.
Specific locations for the new stores weren’t revealed, but the German company said it wants to strengthen its “already strong presence” in the Northeast and Midwest, plus expand out West in Southern California, Phoenix and new cities, like Las Vegas.
I did nearly all of my shopping at Aldi when I was unemployed. Now I have a job and Aldi is still great, no reason to spend more at other grocery stores. I genuinely like a lot of their store brand stuff too
Most of their store brands come from the exact same farms and factory lines as the expensive brand name stuff. Corporations want you to believe there’s a difference but the marketing budget (and bonuses) is what you’re paying extra for — wasn’t the case in the 90’s, but thanks to decades of corporate cost cutting, consolidation, and homogenization, that IS the case in the 2020’s.
The rule of thumb is the more complex the recipe the greater the deviation. Crushed tomatoes? Possibly zero difference. Sugar cookie? Probably 5% difference (that most won’t even notice). Elaborate cookie? As larger difference as between any other brand.
good. only problem with aldi is their produce is hit or miss. moreso than competitors in my experience.
I feel like the places that are less hit and miss probably just throw away more produce so you only see the good stuff.
We recently switched to Aldis. I thought that the produce was going to be a big hangup for me. However, I think it has been fine.
The problem is that it just seems to bad much faster than when we buy it elsewhere. So with that in mind, I just only buy produce at the beginning of the week that I know we will eat quickly.
Maybe it’s just variable location to location but if you haven’t been to one over the last 5 years they have really stepped up their game in my area. The selection certainly isn’t quite as good as the normal supermarkets but the quality well above Walmart for a lot less money.
Does the US have Lidl yet?
Kinda. There’s not many locations. There was one near me, but it went out of business a couple years ago; they’re stock was pretty sporadic and I couldn’t rely on them to have everything I’d need, thus I would have to go to the regular grocery store anyway. The inconvenience of going to two stores took away most of the advantage off the (fairly small) savings they offered, and anecdotally I’m not the only one who felt that way.
I couldn’t rely on them to have everything I’d need
This is a problem with Lidl in Sweden as well - great prices and all, but there’s a large amount of things I’m interested in buying that they quite simply don’t stock. As such, I go to Lidl for all of my ‘primary’ grocery shopping, and supplement with secondary shopping in other supermarkets and speciality shops.
This is only really viable since I have a Lidl 10 minutes away by bike and another supermarket 2 minutes away by foot. Given what I know about the state of urban planning in the U.S, I imagine that having to go to two different stores will be a significantly higher penalty than here.
I think it’s already kind of a thing? I have three stores in my rotation for different reasons
I have a lidl and I fucking love it! Best prices on groceries I’ve seen. I’ve also had issues where they don’t have everything, but there’s a bigger grocery store very close by that I’ll stop at if Lidl is missing something I need. Even my wardrobe is slowly becoming clothes from their rotating section.
I used to hate LIDL, but then I moved to a place where a LIDL was within walking distance, and started using it more frequently. Now I have to admit that I love it too. Fair prices and a fantastic selection of vegan options.
Fuck Lidl. I was close friends with a regional manager when they came to the US and they are fucking horrific about how they treat their employees.
Not in the US, which makes me think the problem is not with Lidl
No, this was definitely in the US. I met these assholes (the VPs and region leaders) personally and know all the shit they pull to break down and isolate employees and overwork them and literally tell them to choose between work or family, and spy on their emails and soooo much more. Like I said, I had a very intimate picture of their US launch, and the two years of logistics which preceded it, trust me when I say that these people are legitimately monsters like I’ve never seen in any other industry.
Typo on my part, meant UK
We shop at Aldi and TJ’s regularly. The grocery stores in my area charge literally double for many of the same items. Considering the grocery stores probably pay lower wholesale prices than either Aldi or TJ’s it yet another example of the highest corporate profits in 70 years.
TJs as in Trader Joe’s? Maybe avoid them for a while
My dumb ass went straight to TJ Maxx 😂
You’re not alone. And it was confusing.
Avoiding a company because of they are attempting to avoid unionization is a double-edged sword. It costs the company business and, in turn, costs the very people trying to unionize their jobs. I’ve made a choice to keep going to TJ’s for the time being.
Aldi or TJ
So Aldi North and Aldi South…
New England resident here. I find Aldi to be alright. The lower price point is definitely noticeable, especially when you compare with other big players in the area like ShopRite and Stop&Shop.
I switched over to Aldi since 2020, they are quite decent when it comes to the basics.
Good to know they are expanding. Aldi’s Sister concern Trader Joe’s is already heavily present in the New England region, although I suspect they have a more ‘niche’ group of customers.
Aldi is da bomb
We could just stop paying cosplay farmers to not grow.
Farmers and the amount of food they grow isn’t the issue. It’s corporate greed.
Yes scarcity has nothing to do with creating scarcity
At times for some things. But tell me, is there a shortage right now of any major staple food/ingredient?
The farmers are not the ones getting rich. It’s Nestle, Kraft, PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg’s and so on. As long as they remain the big market for what the farmer’s are selling, food prices won’t change. But the farmers could go under if their prices crash due to oversupply.
Sorry why can’t you cosplay farmer simps keep your story straight? Half of you are arguing that farmers produce too much so the government is needed to make them produce less and the other half are arguing that farmers don’t produce enough and they need the government to make them produce more. Which is it?
Just a fyi you can hold two ideas at once. There are asshole food distribution companies and there are asshole cosplay farmers getting subsidies to not grow. I know, my hometown was basically this. People pretending to be independent successful farmers when all they could grow was dirt and could only produce meth.
Seasonally and yearly there are different demands for crops. The government incentivizes and disincentivizes growing different crops at different times to promote a healthy market, and stable food supply.
Very well. Why isn’t there a subsidy in the north during oct/nov for milk? Cows production plummets during the switch to hay. Which is why milk prices get that bump during that time. Couldn’t be because the milk lobby is less effective compared to corn since it is much more scattered and hence doesn’t get nice solid voting blocks?
Nah it must be for some deep metaphysical reason beyond our kin.
Maybe because you can’t manifest extra dairy cows out of the aether in the winter?
The government does try to help by buying surplus dairy and turning into preservable cheese, but that has just led to bad jokes about “government cheese.”
I know, my hometown was a small farming town.
commenter explains the most basic farm economics
Very well.
You can hold two ideas at once you know. It’s called lying. Or making shit up about something you thought you knew about because you have the most base-line exposure possible. Or cognitive dissonance.
I don’t know what the hell a cosplay farmer is, but I am assuredly not one. I do my even have a god damn garden on my 0.10 acre city lot.
Learn some history. Farmers have tried to overgrow to make more money, and it has led to collapse as the market forms a glut.
The government does do something different with corn subsidies, causing over abundance of corn, but that has just lead to the overuse of corn syrup sugar, which is a major contributor to obesity.
I see. So we are not going to mention the dust bowl and starvation argument anymore. Love how this arguments just keep wandering.
Do you know what a moral ought from an is is?
On the subject of wandering arguments: you never answered my initial question: what staple food are we experiencing a major shortage of?
We had shortages during the pandemic. They have largely resolved. But food companies have learned people still will buy food, so they kept prices high. What has truly hurt is consolidation. With so much food controlled by so few, competition isn’t working.
Growing food isn’t without a massive carbon and environmental footprint. Trying to force a glut which will just result is spoiled food and bankrupt farmers is not the answer.
Do you like famines? Cause that’s how you get famines…all governments have their farmers run a surplus, so when a year is bad…we don’t all starve to death.
I wasn’t aware paying people not to grow was the same as paying them to grow too much.
You like the dust bowl?
Soil conservation is a thing, when a farmer cannot grow, do you just let them starve?
Cause that’s what you’re suggesting.
I dont know what the other poster was arguing at all, but the dustbowl was not caused by a shortage of farming. The dust bowl was a result of overfarming: native grasslands with incredibly deep roots hold down topsoil, crops like corn and wheat, which we very heavily subisidze, have much much much shorter roots which dont compact the topsoil. If we are to prevent another dustbowl, it will be by reviving the American prairie, not by planting more useless crops.
The other poster is basically saying we shouldn’t pay farmers to not grow crops. When the reality is we pay farmers not to grow to allow the soil to regenerate. The dust bowl was because farmers weren’t subsidized to not grow, so instead of allowing the land to rest and the farmer not go bankrupt, they kept growing crops. So now the government pays them when they let plots rest, so they aren’t forced to keep growing or eat and pay bills.
Yes I am clearly suggesting that I would like farmers to starve. Any honest person would conclude that from what I wrote. Are there any other views you have magically determined that I hold?
I bet your strawman could survive a dust bowl.
But hey I am 100% sure you have researched this topic in depth and know for a fact that literally every politician who demands farm subsidies is only doing it for the pure altruistic avoidance of a dust bowl. Never mind that all the progress that has been made in agriculture the past 100 years.
This is the edgy, low information shit which makes Lemmy so obnoxious. Every. Fucking. Thread.
Ask for a refund
And finally German conquered the USA…
Are they one-stop in the US, though?
In Germany you usually have a little shopping center with Aldi and/or Lidl, a DM and an Edeka. Once you have finished shopping at Aldi and DM you can pop into Edeka and get the 1 or 2 items you didn’t get at Aldi and DM.
Many people in Germany are doing it like that. Edeka seems to florish from the people who prefer branded products and/or can’t get into 2 shops because they don’t go grocery shopping by car and can’t really visit more than 1 shop, because you can’t enter a 2nd one with a bag full of goods from the 1st one.
For some people who aren’t too picky, it might be a one-stop shop. Also true for some basics, like bread, milk, eggs, some produce, or common frozen stuff.
If you are looking for extra variety or less-common ingredients, you’ll have to also shop at a bigger supermarket. But since we usually use cars in the US, it’s not too big a deal to do both the same day
As a Kaufland guy myself I’m deeply disappointed you didn’t mention them.
Oh, I go there too, occasionally. Especially for returning “Pfand” and buying wine, I really enjoy “Albali Reserva” (not Gran Reserva). It’s a more than decent Tinto for only 3.59€/bottle.
But somehow I never really grew fond of Kaufland. Somehow it’s always sort of filthy in there, shopping carts are often not to be found at the entrance, not enough registers are open, “chavs” are loitering at the entrance… I don’t know, I am always stressed out at Kaufland. Aldi, Lidl and Edeka feel more “cozy” to me, I guess.
Aldi is barely a 1st stop. It only reliably has the barest essentials.
When I have enough free time I shop like this. We don’t have Aldi but we have Grocery Outlet. It’s a discount grocery that has some reliable products but mainly over stock or discontinued labeling or some small flaw in packaging or product (ice cream with all the mix-ins at the bottom) or near expiry that wouldn’t fly at a regular store. So you never know what you’ll find there, for very low prices. Then I hit up Safeway, decent quality, where half the store is usually on some buy-one-get-one sale, then to the high end, employee owned, small chain where I can get farm stand quality meats raised a few miles away, high quality cat food and local produce.
Shopping this way saves about $400 per month. When I don’t really have time (I work 72 hours per week, take online college classes and have elderly family members to look in on) I end up spending about $1000 per month on groceries at the fancy store.
Aldi for the essentials. Then Too Good To Go for fruit and vegetables and bread/ pastries.
It could be one stop, but their produce and baked goods are bare minimum.
The meats are the most affordable around me.
because you can’t enter a 2nd one with a bag full of goods from the 1st one.
That’s not an issue I literally do it all the time. Backpack, though.
Yes that’s how we use it as well. Aldi is for staples and then we either do the international grocer or another specialty grocer. Not really a big deal at all, especially if you don’t do your shopping all at one time.
Friggen love aldi. I’m kinda disappointed every time I have to go somewhere else now. Just wish they had longer hours cause my sleep disorder means it’s hard to make it there before they close sometimes
