Ours doesn't even have bags. If you want a grocery cart, you plug a quarter in a machine to get one. If you bring your cart back, you get your quarter back. They don't have a great selection, nor premium brands. But you can get produce at a great price! It's the only place we buy Moo Juice - the grocery stores just rape people around here on that item.
Aldi is run by two brothers from Germany -- now in their 90s. They are in the Forbes top 10 list, they go by the names of Karl and Theo Albrecht. Their concept is simple but cutthroat: offering no-brandname fast rotating goods only. They're notorious for "convincing" suppliers to cut costs and prices again and again as Aldi is purchasing humongous volumes. They offer around only 350-400 products that cover 75-80% of the daily staples usage in a working class household. They go through an entire store's worth of inventory every 24-48 hours. Wall-Mart entered the German market I believe in 1997/98. They closed up shop, frustrated, just 2-3 years later. Not a chance. A typical Aldi store would have 1 manager and 4-5 checkout employees. There's usually nobody to give you any in-depth service. Customers know that. Back in the day (this might have changed) the sales ladies at the checkout didn't even have barcode scanners. After years of training and given the limited amount of products sold, they were much faster just typing in product IDs. Aldi pays the sales ladies based on the amount of products sold, it's some form of incentive based system. During University in the 90s I had the chance to talk to a guy running a family owned oil mill in Germany. He said he sells 70% of his monthly production to Aldi. His net profits on that portion of his business was exactly 0%. That was basically the condition of Aldi to give their business to him. But it gave him the capacity utilization to make the business work on his end. To have the necessary volume buying seeds etc. He made his money selling the same oil that he sold to Aldi, just with different brand names/labels and filling it into glass bottles instead of plastic bottles, for consumers that thought the higher quality veggie oil comes in glass bottles.
Used to be a hallmark around where I lived, closed down years ago, i believe a clothing store took its place, those stores used to thrive back in the 80's and 90's. No need to go to hallmark, cvs and even my local supermarkets now carry cards and giftwrap. I think its crazy the amount you pay for a gift bag or gift box, giftwrap and card, you can easily spend about $15 for that at a hallmark without a problem.
Does anyone remember those aisles of generic goods that grocery stores used to carry? Stuff looked like if was issued by the army...plain b&w labels, no color...I wonder how long before we see that again. As bad as things are, or at least how they are reported by the msm, It's still not like the mid-late '70s. People are still maintinig their lifestyle. Hell, the malls around here are packed on weeekends.
Arnie, our local Super WalMart has done something strange. In the meats/deli section, all you can get are WalMart products. VERY limited selection, and the deli products suck dirt. The Grocery sections have been cut back to a very limited # of choices too. It's all so homogenized, it's kinda spooky.
Thanks. I knew little of this. This explains why dealing with Aldi on a potential land sale was one of the most frustrating experiences in my life, and why the deal didn't go through. They were absolutely brutal to deal with, and totally unrealistic in their price expectations and other terms. I see discount stores mopping the floor with premium retailers; I see people with high end cars shopping discount. Frugal is in, and many cases necessary. Now if they would only do something about the property taxes I have to pay on unsold inventory in a few months, as I just am getting piles of bills now, and it makes me feel like trading down to a Hyundai or Kia to compensate.