I finally went to Aldi!

I know…I am embarrassed that it’s taken me this long! Most frugal people worth their salt(and who have an Aldi in their area) shop there regularly. For a long while, though, the only one in the area has been quite out of the way for me, so I wasn’t very motivated about checking it out. However, an Aldi has recently opened up right across the street from my regular grocery store! Several friends have recently raved about their prices, so that was the final kick that I needed to go check it out. I feel mostly positive about my shopping experience, and I think I’ll be going back.

A couple of things about Aldi are very different from a regular grocery store.

• You have to insert a quarter into the cart to release it from the corral. This is to reduce cart theft and eliminate the need for an employee to round up the carts. Your quarter is returned to you once you put the cart back into the corral.
• There’s no music. I went when there were only a handful of other shoppers, and it was SO quiet in there. It was a little weird, but I’m happy to go without music if it means lower prices.
• There are hardly any employees in the store. When I went, the sole employee I saw was the cashier.
• They don’t accept checks or credit cards, which means you can only pay by debit, cash, or EBT.
• They don’t provide bags. You can bring your own, or buy their bags.
• They carry very few name brands. Most everything is from their own private label brand.
• The store is a LOT smaller than normal grocery store. This is because they carry a limited number of products and there’s usually only one brand available.
• They don’t have shelves like a regular grocery store…instead things are arranged in stacks, Costco style:

I thought most of the prices were good, with a few exceptions. Milk, at $3 a gallon, was a very good bargain. Butter is sold for $1.99, the same price Costco charges for their multipacks. A 12 ounce can of OJ concentrate was only $1.19(that usually costs around $2 at a regular store). Bananas and most other produce were priced pretty cheaply as well.

The one thing I probably won’t buy there is any sort of meat. Chicken breasts were around $2.50 a pound, and while that’s not a terrible price, I can usually get chicken breasts on sale for $1.99/pound or less. So, I feel quite confident that I can consistently beat Aldi’s meat prices by shopping the front page sales of my regular grocery stores.

Overall, though, I was quite impressed. The location I went to was very clean and neat, and everything was well-organized. And I appreciate a lot of things about Aldi’s business ideas…I like the idea of reducing trash by not offering bags, I like that they have doors and lids on the freezers to save energy, and I like the idea of reducing “fluff” sort of costs(like coffee cafes and music and wood floors) in order to offer lower prices.

I’m particularly impressed by the idea of stocking only the fastest-selling items in order to prevent food spoilage. Since regular grocery stores stock so many items, some of them are slower to sell than others, which means that there’s more chance that they’ll spoil or go out of date. I know that grocery stores tend to waste mammoth amounts of food, so I think it’s great that the Aldi stores are trying to be different.

So, what about you? Do you shop at Aldi’s? What things have you found to be good buys?