Today, I will convince you that Aldi is better than any other grocery store!
We should set the record straight: here, you’re going to read a lot about how Aldi is better than any other store out there. Call Aldi however you want: entitled, nepo-baby, the product of 21st century consumerism.
I just think it’s the best out there! And if you tell me you’ve never been there before, well, I won’t believe it anyway! Because that grocery chain is too good to miss out.
If you’re not joking and you’ve actually never stepped foot in Aldi before, I will tell you a couple of things worth knowing about. First of all, it’s a wildly popular discount grocery chain that operates in over 1,500 locations. While it’s more popular in Europe, especially Germany, plenty of Americans still remember the day an Aldi location opened in their city.
They have it marked on a calendar. The company was founded in the 1940s by two brothers, Karl and Theo Albrecht. They decided to part ways in the 1960s and split the company into two: Aldi Sud and Nord. Both companies managed to expand globally, with Aldi Sud taking control over the stores in the U.S.
However, Aldi Nord operates the Trader Joe’s chain, which has fewer stores, but somehow it’s better known. Even if Aldi lacks proper name recognition, we still love it, and we think it’s the best out there.
Surprisingly or not, Aldi has plenty in common with Trader Joe’s. It has extremely low prices, and it stocks a very limited selection of items. Aldi also carries around 1,300 of the fastest-moving grocery items, as most grocery stores sell around 30,000 items.
With fewer items, stores can be smaller, which also means lower rent and electricity costs. Besides, you won’t even find too many name-brand items because most of what Aldi is selling is under its own private-label umbrella.
However, the shopping experience differs a lot in these two stores, where happy employees roam the aisles, handing out all kinds of samples and assisting shoppers.
At Aldi, you will find items displayed in cardboard boxes they were originally shipped in. You also have to bag your own groceries, and Aldi will charge you for the bags if you forget to bring your own.
There’s a 25-cent deposit required if you want a shopping cart, even if you’ll get a quarterback by returning the cart. The system helps Aldi save more money, but that money is presumably passed along to customers at lower prices.
It was meant to reduce the cost of hiring employees to round up the carts from the parking lot. But don’t be scared by the chain’s frugal nature.
If you’ve ever driven past the blue and orange sign and wondered whether it’s really worth your while to venture into an Aldi store, here are a couple of reasons why you should:
You could easily feed a family of four with 25 meals for less than $150.
And when I say this, I don’t mean peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every single night. Aldi’s prices are low enough to fill your cart with enough food to make almost a month’s worth of dinners for only $6 a meal.
The fact that you can make 25 balanced meals for a family of four people for only $150 proves exactly how many wonders come with the Aldi magic. Recipes might also include turkey chili, roasted red pepper chicken, spinach frittata, and, of course, homemade macaroni and cheese.
You can buy organic and stick to the budget.
Aldi’s organic selection definitely doesn’t rival the offerings you might get at Whole Foods, but it might include plenty of the basic ones (and a couple of not-so-basic products) that are much cheaper than other similar offerings at supermarkets.
Among organic items, you might find milk, beef, yogurt, fruit, vegetables, pasta, pasta sauce, cane sugar, instant oatmeal, frozen fruit, and even blue corn chips.
For instance, a 5-ounce package of organic spinach is only 50 cents, which is $1 less than the packages of the same size at many other area supermarkets (Walmart included).
A 10-ounce container of organic cherry tomatoes was $1 less at Aldi than other supermarkets, and so was the 10-ounce package of organic frozen blueberries.
You can easily find inexpensive specialty items.
For a store with such a limited selection, Aldi has way more than the fair share of items that would tempt any foodie out there to buy, well, everything. And that’s why I stand by my belief that Aldi is better.
For instance, gourmet cheeses like brie and goat cheese cost around 40% less than other cheeses at other supermarkets. Aldi also sells fair trade coffee for 33 cents per ounce.
Moreover, Starbucks charges around 88 cents per ounce for its fair trade coffee. And Aldi? Well, Aldi stocks sweet potato and quinoa chips, rosemary crostini, blue cheese-stuffed olives, and mascarpone cheesecake, and I’m not even close to the end of the list.
You can get gluten-free products for less.
Gluten-free versions of food items usually cost twice as much as their other counterparts, as Consumer Report research showed. Even if you’ll pay more for gluten-free products than other conventional items at Aldi, the discount grocer’s LiveGfree brand is usually at a lower price than national gluten-free brands.
Moreover, they also include products like cereal, pasta, crackers, cookies, cake mix, and, naturally, frozen foods. For instance, a 16-ounce box of LiveGFfree gluten-free baking mix is less expensive than a box of Bisquick gluten-free baking mix at Walmart.
You could find a couple of Trader Joe’s knock-offs.
Trader Joe’s is famous for its selection of, let’s say, unusual items. And by unusual, I mean things you wouldn’t see anywhere else. While you might not find some of the most popular Trader Joe’s products, like Speculoos Cookie Butter, at Aldi, you could even find guacamole tortilla chips and sparkling lemonade!
Also, if Thai lime cashews sound interesting to you, then you’ll be happy to find out that they also come at a lower price. Moreover, Aldi even has jalapeno ketchup. Given all this, we can easily say that Aldi is better.
Bonus: You could buy cookies that taste just like Samoas at Aldi.
If you’re a big fan of Girl Scout Samoa cookies, you can easily get your fix year-round with some Aldi-exclusive Benton’s Caramel Coconut Fudge cookies.
And do you want to know what’s the best part? One package of Aldi cookies costs a minimum of 50% less than a box of Samoas. You know, it’s something to think about!
A little extra tip from me to you!
Now, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve convinced you to at least try shopping there if you’re not an Aldi aficionado like me. Well, here’s another thing: You will need to make lists.
There are plenty of them. And since I already shared with you my favorite grocery shopping spot, I feel the need to complete my mission and share with you my other big secret: my grocery shopping list method. First, go here and check out the magnetic notepads that I use every weekend. You see, they have different patterns.
Well, I use every single pattern depending on what I need. Some days, I’ll pick bananas for, well, fruits, and other days, bananas stand for dairy and cheese. You get the gist, don’t you?
If you want to read other articles, here’s what we recommend: 8 Important Financial Goals to Add to Your To-Do List for the Next Year
