Bus-130-300
Marc Sweis
Aldi Visit
As a frequent Aldi’s shopper I was able to find distinct qualities about them that makes them successful.
It is a German based grocery store that manages to have lower prices than other nearby competitors.
When you take a first glance at the store and walking into it you can see some obvious differences. To
begin with most Aldi’s stores are much smaller than its competitors like Jewel, Mariano’s, or Pete’s fresh
market, this gives them an advantage in managing the store thus less salary expense to give to
employees. When I visit the store there is usually one person on the cash register and another two
people working the sales floor, and handling stock. As opposed to a place like Jewel’s and Mariano’s
which has at least around 20 employees.
The next thing I noticed was that you have insert a quarter to give a cart, and you will get it back when
returning it. You don’t pay a quarter, you use it to rent the cart. When you go to put your cart back in
the corral you attach the red chain from the cart behind yours to the back of your carts quarter holder.
This pushes your quarter out so you get it back at the end of your shopping trip. This keeps the prices
low so Aldi doesn’t have to hire extra staff to collect carts and it keeps the parking lot free of carts.
Lastly the most obvious to all of us is that they do not use plastic bags. Easy to figure out the cost of
plastics bags adds prices to the products. The customer essentially “works” for these discounts by
bringing in their own bags, or purchasing a large bag (usually around 7 cents), or using empty boxes
