Sadly, my plumbing cannot handle that fluffy Charmin.
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Aldi around here has the ugliest produce I’ve ever seen. It’s not worth my time to go there for a few things that might be cheaper.
Yeah, the times I’ve ventured into one I often see something unusual and interesting that my regular grocery store doesn’t have. But you can’t depend on Aldi to have what you need, and the one closest to my path is usually not very clean or pleasant. I’m not sure I’ve ever even looked at their produce.
There’s also not one very close. I mean, closer than Costco, but Costco is close to a lot of other stuff and Aldi is not. I maybe shop at Aldi once a year.
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That’s been my experience. I usually find something that catches my eye, but my store rotates stock so you can’t depend on it being there next time. So I go a few times a year and enjoy it, but I can’t make it my only grocer.
My store is pretty clean. Not spotless, but honestly cleaner than where I usually shop.
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Aldi is the closest grocery store to my house. I think I have gone their twice. I suppose I should go just to remind myself what I could get there if I only needed a couple things. My usual store is a mile further.
Most my groceries come from Costco. Yes, I can buy a 5# bag of onions and have no problem getting through all of it. I need to get back into the routine of stopping by Trader Joes on the way home from the office now that I am going in regularly. I sort of forgot about it since covid/wfh.
My parents love Aldi. Like good 'Mericans they by the cheapest food possible and spend stupid amounts of money on cars that are way larger than they need. They could certainly afford to support the grocery store in their town and still buy their new cars every 3 years, but I gave up trying to convince them food quality is a thing. Doesn’t really matter where the canned vegetables and bags of chips are coming from if that is all you buy anyway.
Is Aldi lower quality? I honestly don’t know. Seems like the stuff I find there to buy is always some European thing, which doesn’t automatically mean high quality, but presumably isn’t super cheap either. Dunno.
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My Dad is stupidly cheap about orange juice. He buys the frozen concentrate and mixes it up. It has pulp in it. One time he was visiting and I was like “Oh, sorry, I only have pulp free Simply Orange.”
Oh no problem… he actually prefers that to what he buys. He just buys the other stuff because he’s cheap.
Dad… seriously… you’re a freaking millionaire. Buy the orange juice you like. If you leave your money to me … I’m going to buy the expensive orange juice. You may as well too. 
I mean when I was a kid he was a college professor and money was tight, so buying the cheap orange juice was one thing. But then he left academia and did a lot better for himself plus I assume he inherited a crap-ton from my grandmother.
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I doubt the prepackaged foods are any different. It was more the lack of the butcher/deli/ bakery and general produce options.
Maybe it’s better now than it was last time i was there a few years ago.
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the aldi I go to (for like 4 specific things) does have meat in packages (like chicken breasts and legs) like any other grocery store i go to would have. they do not have a butcher/meat counter.
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We have to have big cars here bc everyone else has them and in little cars you can’t see to back up around the giant trucks. It’s a safety issue.
I started shopping at Aldi a couple of years ago for budgetary reasons, and find that it is fine for:
- packaged meat (ground beef, chicken, pork chops, etc.) of the fairly generic variety. Their 2.4 lb hunk of 80/20 ground beef is high-quality and cheaper than typically available in the grocery store and it is about the right size for virtually all my meals (meatloaf, tacos, sloppy joe, etc.). Not as cheap / lb as Costco; however, Costco requires me to perform additional work to separate a 5- or 10-lb package into my usable portions, whereas Aldi has done that for me already.
- chips and salsa and salad dressing, again of the fairly generic variety
- fruits - apples, pears bananas, grapes, etc.
- some veggies (potatoes, onions, celery, broccoli) that don’t spoil quickly like cucumbers
- cereal
- bread
- dairy, again with the caveat that you don’t have a lot of brand names to choose for things like butter, yogurt, cheese, etc, nor do you have many different varieties. Like, there will be 2 kinds of shredded cheddar cheese (mild, sharp), not 5 or 7 that you’d find in your typical big box grocery store (mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp, etc.). 3 or 4 flavors of canned soup, not 15 or 20.
I don’t know about quality or value of things like toilet paper, detergents, frozen packaged foods (chicken nuggets, pizzas, Uncrustables, etc) as I generally get those at Costco.
If you’re doing anything where you want something more on the edge (like say the 80th percentile of a distribution, like a spice that only gets used a few times a year), you’ll have to go to your typical grocery store for that.
Aldi is fine. But, like Woodman’s (regional chain of mega-sized grocery stores), they don’t take credit card. Cash, debit, or check, but they don’t like paying origination fees on CC transactions. I find this difficult to work around.
my aldi has 80% of the self-checkouts as card only
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yabbut that means debit card not credit card, right?
Just before Christmas the mayor announced that Trader Joe’s is coming to our town. People were super excited. I went to one with my DD in Albuquerque and didn’t find it all that. But I’m sure we will check it but probably won’t make it a regular stop.
Every city in the area has been trying to get a Trader Joe’s but have gotten virtually no response from the company at all. Even we didn’t get anything from the company but a developer who brought a big furniture store to a former Shopko store building had managed to bring one in next to that same furniture retailer in Boise, ID so he had some connections and pull and managed to get it done.
Also heard that the Costco might be looking to move as they are regularly slammed to the point that nearly the entire parking lot is full. We lost out on them when the came to the area because we have rules requiring a nicer building than they wanted to build. We will see if they look at another available place in our city.
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I like Trader Joe’s, but like Costco their stock does tend to change up without notice and you don’t always find the same things. That said the things I do find there are usually good quality and generally cheaper than similar products at our regular grocery stores.
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Never had a problem using credit card at Aldi. I’ve been to a couple dozen stores over 8 or 9 states.
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There was supposed to be another Costco 30 minutes from us but the council wouldn’t allow them to put in a gas station so Costco pulled out.
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Ill give Aldi another shot sometime. I think the issue is there is probably a lot of overlap on what i could buy there but get now from costco, where the things I’ll go to the local store for like fresh ground beef/sausage or sliced deli meats are not available there? Or I’m just too damn picky on those things and set in my ways.
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