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header image provided by Pixabay
So my area finally has an ALDI grocery store. The store opened this week. I had heard great things about the chain from friends I chat with that live back east.
I was a bit curious to see what the big deal was about. I’d heard the pricing was very good as was the quality of the food. So I stopped off yesterday.
As we all know grocery shopping isn’t all that exciting and can be a bit of a chore. So for me, if I can get in and out quickly it works out best. Since I wasn’t very familiar with the ALDI layout or what their products were like it was a bit of an adventure. My dad was rather excited to visit the new store.
What we encountered first
One of the first things you notice about ALDI is the way the carts are organized. You have to insert a quarter into a slot to even use a shopping cart.
Here’s a photo of what I mean
So first off if you don’t have a quarter handy you can’t use a cart. I had one which was great. To be honest I kind of like this idea. It may help reduce or eliminate cart theft. It also gives you an incentive to return your cart to the cart return area so you can get your quarter back. Once you unlink the cart you can go on your way.
Store Layout
Overall the store layout for my local store was similar to the one in the header image photo. You walk right into the produce area. After that, it’s basic short aisles of various items. The layout is very easy to navigate and clean. Being that the stores only been open 2 days it was well organized and stocked.
Pricing
As far as I noticed pricing was about average. Some items were at a very good price. Other items were pretty standard. I found a 10 lb bag of potatoes for $1.49 so that wasn’t a bad deal.
Brands
The one thing that did strike me about ALDI was that the brands aren’t really brands. They seem to sell store-brand items or what could be considered generic brands. I don’t mind this idea it’s just sort of odd (at least to me anyway) to find no real name brand items on a shelf.
I will say this some products did have name brand items. For example, ALDI sold Coke and Sprite as well as La Croix water.
Other items such as milk, juices, and cheeses are store brands.
The swiss cheese slices are a good example of this. They are marketed as Happy Farms. I had some earlier and they were very good by the way.
Even their snack foods are store brands. I picked up these cheese crackers for like a $1.99
Other impressions
Overall I found the layout to be easy to navigate and everything was well stocked. Like most grocery stores they had an aisle of seasonal items which was nice to walk down. They currently had a number of holiday gift ideas or winter-related items.
I like that they offered a wide variety of different cheeses as well as dips and snack items. The meat section was well organized. I did find some great prices on frozen fish and seafood. I picked up a few bags of shrimp for under $6.
The highlight of my visit
The highlight of my visit was buying a dozen eggs for 49 cents. (Yeah you know your an adult when you get excited about cheap eggs). But you can’t beat that price for a dozen large eggs.
Checkout
The checkout process was fast and very easy. Since I live in Southern California you have to either take your own reusable bag now or purchase one for 10 cents each. I liked that they are offered at the register and the cashier doesn’t have to ask everyone if they need a bag. You can add it to your groceries as your adding items to the conveyer belt.
Price-wise we spent about average because I did buy seafood so we spent under $40 but that wasn’t too bad. At other grocery stores, it would have been much more. I think we will probably visit ALDI again to see what else we like about it.
Have you shopped at ALDI?
