Welcome To The Smart Aldi Shopper!

Hi, and thanks for stopping by! 

If you're like me, you need to stretch your grocery budget as far as you possibly can. Times are tough, and we're all looking for ways to economize and do more with less. We scan the newspaper and sales flyers every week, looking for the best grocery deals we can find. We clip coupons and visit the on-line couponing sites - anything we can do to stretch that dollar. 


Maybe you've shifted from buying the big brand-name food and household products and started trying the store brands. I know I have. In fact, I've taken it a little further, and I now do a very large part of my grocery shopping at Aldi. 

Aldi is a low-price supermarket with more than 1,100 stores, spread over 31 states. They're one of the top 25 food retailers in the US - they see more than 20 million customers each month. And they're expanding at an average rate of two new stores a week. Internationally, they operate more than 5000 stores! 

But there are a few differences at Aldi which may be confusing, or even a bit off-putting to the first-time Aldi shopper. For instance, the store itself is much smaller than a typical chain supermarket, and they stock far fewer items. Whereas the typical grocery retailer might stock 45 THOUSAND different items, or even more - Aldi stocks only about 1500. And almost all of them - maybe 90 to 95% - are Aldi's own store brands. The only national name-brands you'll see are on special-purchase and limited-time-only items which vary from week to week. 


The stores that I've seen have only four or five aisles, and most merchandise is stacked on pallets in their shipping boxes warehouse-style instead of typical grocery store shelves. 


Aldi charges a few cents each for grocery bags if you need them, and you'll have to bag your own purchases. The good news is they encourage you to take any empty boxes you see around the store and use those instead if you like. Or, just wheel the cart out to your car, toss everything in, and deal with it when you get home!

You'll also find that the grocery carts are chained together in rows just outside the front entrance. You slip a quarter into a slot on the cart handle, and -presto- the little chain releases the cart for you to use. When you're done shopping, just return the cart to the row, reattach the chain to its neighbor, and your quarter is released back to you. 

A quarter saves you dollars!

These are all GREAT ideas - a smaller store means less walking around for you; charging separately for bags means that the cost isn't being hidden in the overall mark-up; and keeping the carts chained together keeps them orderly and out of the parking lot away from the cars. It also means they don't have to pay someone to go collect the stray carts left in the lot, which reduces staffing costs. This helps keep the prices you pay low. 


I don't mind bringing my own bags from home and bagging the groceries myself - I actually prefer it. That way I know the canned ham won't get tossed in a bag on top of my loaf of bread and eggs, and I can bag all the frozen foods together, all the canned goods together, and so on, just as I like it. If I happen to forget my bags, its easy enough to grab an empty box in the store and just use that. The staff at ALDI love it when you do that - it saves them time cleaning up, and less waste for them to have to deal with! 


I like Aldi - I like it a lot. But it's certainly not perfect. I have been able to dramatically reduce my weekly food bill by shopping there, but I'll admit, not every product is a hit. Just like with any store brand, there are some items that are perfectly fine replacements for the name-brands and good by any standard. But there are some that my family and I just don't care for and won't buy again. I'll help you navigate your way up and down the aisles while avoiding some of the products that we think just don't measure up. 

I hope you've got your list, because in the next post, we're going shopping! 


-Jeff the ALDI Shopper