What I did on my ALDI Vacation

I attended a blogger event held by ALDI. All opinions here, however, are my own.

OK… it wasn’t a vacation… but it was fun! And feels like an essay, because I have a lot to say about this trip, so bear with me here. 🙂 Last week, ALDI hosted a blogger event in Geneva and at their Batavia headquarters. I already gave you a couple of sneaky peeks earlier:

• Here’s taste testing wine at the ALDI Test Kitchen, and
• Here’s multiple barcodes for maximum efficiency (which I still think is the coolest thing ever).

And here, at long last, is the rest.

Taste Testing in the Test Kitchen

Our evening last Thursday started off in the ALDI Test Kitchen, where we had the opportunity to blind taste test a number of ALDI brand products against their comparable name brand counterparts.

The cheese and crackers

We taste tested Happy Farms (ALDI brand) colby jack cheese vs. Kraft. This one surprised me — ALDI cheese won hands down on both taste and texture.

As did their crackers! Savoritz even look butterier, lol.

Wines and sparkling juices

We also taste tested various wines and sparkling juices against national brands like Welch’s and Woodbridge. Here, people were much more divided. What was interesting, though, is no one thought the ALDI wines were bad — it was just a taste preference as to which people preferred. In both wines and sparkling juices, the name brands tended to be sweeter.

If you’re shopping without coupons or rebate offers though, ALDI wines win the price war hands down. And they do carry a lot of wines…

Although wines and beers are not carried in all stores. If you use their store locator and put in your ZIP, you’ll see little logos next to those that do carry alcohol.

The Guarantee

If you’re ever nervous about trying ALDI products, they have a double satisfaction guarantee — if you aren’t 100% satisfied with a product, they will replace it AND refund your money. I have never actually returned anything — but once in the checkout line noticed that a clamshell of grapes had a few moldy ones on one side. I didn’t buy it and told the cashier, who called the manager, who walked me back to the grapes, dug through for a good container, and gave it to me free.

Then, they fed us a holiday dinner!

 

Starting with these little “Thanksgiving in a bite” appetizers, which were really good, not to mention cute. ALDI has starting featuring additional recipes on their Facebook page, which is useful for those of you who aren’t sure about cooking with ALDI products.

Everything here comes from ALDI. The ham is spiral sliced, and was very, very good. If I remember right, it’s something like $1.39/lb, which is a very, very good price for spiral, and something I’d definitely serve for the holidays. Everything else was tasty except the brown & serve rolls, which were kind of dry.

Efficiency = lower prices

The next morning, we visited the Geneva ALDI — wow, nice store! Much bigger than mine, lol. We were treated to a tour and a discussion of the various ways in which efficiency allows ALDI to lower costs and operate with fewer employees that conventional grocery stores.

Multiple barcodes

I already posted about this, but again, since they control the production of their own brands, ALDI has designed their packaging to feature multiple barcodes. This means that, no matter how a cashier grabs a product, it will scan. This speeds up checkout and is better for anyone’s wrists!

Controlling production and distribution

Since ALDI controls the production and distribution of its own products (very few national brand names here!), you’ll see additional savings in other ways as well. And, this allows stores to restock more quickly — when a store places an order with their warehouse (and most stores are within 60 miles of a warehouse), they will receive that shipment in 6-24 hours. They don’t have to wait for a weekly order to restock, or wait for multiple brands to come in and restock their own items.

Most stores get shipments of produce in 5-7 times a week, which also helps keeps items fresh. (And you’ll note that there are no scales at the registers — produce is sold per each, prepackaged or barcoded with the weight in the case of, say, bananas.)

Energy efficiency

ALDI has gone back and retrofitted stores to be more energy efficient, which has saved them 30% or more on their energy costs. Changes range from overhead fixtures and bulbs to swapping out their refrigerator and freezer lighting for LEDs, which both produce less energy and don’t emit heat.

Stocking and stacking

We watched a single employee restock these chips in about two minutes. How? Everything is stocked in the cases it comes in, which meant she could just stack the cardboard cases up without removing everything, putting it bag by bag on the shelf, and rotating old stock to the front. We were told they can stock a full truck of groceries in six person-hours, vs. about 45 or so at traditional stores. What’s also interesting: See how the colors of the boxes blend in with the packaging?  This is deliberate, so that you as a customer don’t even really pay attention to the lack of conventional shelving.

You’ll see similar efficiencies throughout. ALDI’s milk is delivered direct from the dairy on these wire rolling racks, which roll right into the cooler — no loading jugs onto a shelf. Eggs, same way.

Yogurt, cool. See how it sits inside this cardboard container? These sit on a shelf that’s slightly tilted towards the front. When one cardboard container is empty, they just pull it out and the one behind it automatically slides to the front, rotating their stock for them. They restock cases from the back.

What does the focus on efficiency mean for employees?

ALDI is the only grocery store I’ve seen where cashiers get to sit — which I think is fantastic. However, no one at ALDI is “just” a cashier: Everyone has multiple duties stocking, cleaning, cashiering, in produce, walking the store to see what needs doing, etc.

Apparently when ALDI has open positions, they have a ton of applicants —  but the training process is at least a month-long process, and many quit during that first month because they don’t realize (although it’s not a secret!) until they’re into it that this is not a typical cashiering job. Those that do have the energy and ambition for all the different tasks, though, tend to stay for years, and many move up the ladder.

In the Chicago area:

• Cashiers start at $12.65 an hour.
• All are part-time, averaging 20-30 hours a week.
• ALDI provides full medical and dental at low cost — $10-$15 a month.
• At most stores, only 3-4 people will be working at a time, but on a busy day (weekend, holiday) sometimes as many as 6-7.

Allergens, HFCS, MSG, organic and natural products and more

I asked about ALDI’s gluten free logo, since it differs from the certified gluten free logo you see on some national brand products. I was told that they avoid cross-contamination and send their gluten free products out for testing.

As far as HFCS, I’ve heard from some of you that you avoid shopping at ALDI because of concerns about HFCS in their processed products. Some of their products do indeed still contain it (above: one of the bottled teas from lunch). However, they’ve phased it out of others, including pasta sauce and breads. As with any store, it’s impossible to make a blanket generalization; you’ll need to read labels to see whether products meet your family’s needs and standards.

As far as MSG — here’s my writeup about: does ALDI broth contain MSG? Again, read labels here, and anywhere, if you’re trying to avoid certain ingredients or additives.

Organic and natural

Some of you were ever so pleased with last month’s special buys on organic and natural products, including that organic 64 oz apple juice they were selling for $2.49. You’ll be happy to know that ALDI will be introducing Simply Nature as a new line sometime in January, which will include 40-50 top-selling organic and natural items — so let’s look forward to that, pretty cool! Their milk is BGH free, but they do not sell organic milk.

Wrapping up

After the store tour, we then went back to the ALDI Test Kitchen and had a guacamole contest with ALDI brand ingredients. I did not win, alas, but look how tasty mine was nonetheless! This was followed by a taco bar — again, featuring all ALDI brands. This was quite good, and I ate too much of it, lol.

Overall, I’ll admit I am a recent ALDI convert, and have only been shopping there a little over a year. I was not initially impressed with the produce etc. at my store several years ago, but it’s really changed over. I now shop there almost every week — and started doing so long before they ever invited me to any events. 🙂 I haven’t stopped coupon shopping, but as you all know, couponing has changed over the past couple of years. ALDI complements couponing by providing a good way to save on on items where we rarely see coupon deals, on produce, and on staples.

The fine print

ALDI hosted this blogger event and fed me last week. All opinions in this post, however, are my own.