On May 14, 3:11*pm, Ema Nymton > wrote:
> This morning, George and I went to Aldi's for the first time. *My first
> impression was, the store is not very big. They had brands that I am not
> familiar with, but they had decent prices. They did not have scallions,
> but they had everything else on my list. I bought 10 lbs of russet
> potatoes because they were 29 cents per pound, so now I have to cook
> potatoes, even though they are not George's favorite vegetable. Poor
> George. We had to insert 25 cents to get a grocery basket, I have never
> seen that before.
>
> So, how do you like Aldi's?
>

My buddy managed one when they first came to America, some 35 years
ago. At the time, at least, they private labeled the best known
products in America: Their blue swirl laundry detergent was Cheer,
their orange swirl detergent was Tide, all the soups came from
Campbell. They were even less frills than they are now: no
refrigeration in the store. "Velveeta" was the only dairy product I
can recall. No bags, not even for sale -- the way Costco is now. And,
like Costco. the cashier would throw stuff into another cart as she
rang it up. No prices were marked -- Boxes were simply slit open as
needed -- the cashier would have to memorize the prices of everything.
But there was a minimum of unique pricing. I think a can of Campbell's
Tomato soup was a dime, 50% lower than anywhere else.

As time went on they added some Euro touches like the quarter to
release a cart (you get that back when you return it). That tends to
insure that no carts lurk in the parking lots -- people who want to
make 25 cents will pick it up. Also the non-food weekly specials --
people buy their power tools and even their AC generator.

I have shopped at Aldi's in Munich. If you like their housebrands they
are fine, but I treated it like Trader Joe's here, as a supplementary
store rather than the one to shop. They were the only store to take
back their beverage containers, making them a bit inconvenient. One
thing I liked was the tricolored bell peppers that you sometimes see
at TJ's.