When customers enter stores, they’ll notice they look almost nothing like traditional supermarkets in the United States. They are fierce and they are good.” Greg Foran, CEO of Walmart's US operations I've been competing against Aldi for 20-plus years. A search on Etsy for “Aldi quarter keeper” turns up more than 500 results. The store’s most die-hard fans even celebrate it, heralding when Aldi offers “quarter keeper” keychains from time to time. Aldi, which opened its first US store in Iowa in 1976, has stuck with the model, insisting the deposit system is key to its low-price strategy. Several American grocers tried it in the 1980s and 1990s, but abandoned the practice after it annoyed customers who had come to expect more services at their grocery stores.
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It forces that behavior by charging customers a quarter deposit that they get back when they return their carts. Rather than employ a team of runners to retrieve carts from the parking lot all day, Aldi expects its customers to return carts to the store after each shopping trip.
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“I didn’t realize that there were so many of us.” “There’s a lot of Aldi nerds out there,” she said. "I am willing to do the extra work because the prices are amazing,” said Diane Youngpeter, who runs a fan blog about the grocer called the Aldi Nerd and an Aldi Facebook group with 50,000 members. The allure is all in the rock-bottom prices, which are so cheap that Aldi often beats Walmart at its own low-price game. When it enters a new town, it’s not uncommon for hundreds of people to turn out for the grand opening. And at checkout, cashiers hurry shoppers away, expecting them to bag their own groceries in a separate location away from the cash register.īut Aldi has built a cult-like following. Plastic and paper bags are available only for a fee. Shoppers need a quarter to rent a shopping cart. New customers may be jolted at first by the experience of shopping at an Aldi, which expects its customers to endure a number of minor inconveniences not typical at other American grocery stores. In recent years, Aldi has expanded its produce and organic offerings to draw in more customers. He isn’t pointing to large chains like Kroger or Albertsons, dollar stores like Dollar General or online entrants like FreshDirect and Instacart.įoran is describing Aldi, the no-frills German discount grocery chain that’s growing aggressively in the United States and reshaping the industry along the way. And even Walmart - the largest player of all - faces new competition from Amazon, which bought Whole Foods in 2017 for almost $14 billion.īut when Walmart’s US CEO Greg Foran invokes words like “fierce,” “good” and “clever” in speaking almost admiringly about one of his competitors, he’s not referring to Amazon. Large companies increasingly control the industry, which had long operated as a dispersed network of smaller, local grocers. Pressures are so intense that regional chains like Southeastern Grocers, the owner of Winn-Dixie and Bi-Lo, filed for bankruptcy.
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Dollar stores and drugstores are selling more groceries. Online shopping and home delivery are changing the way people buy their food. It’s about time they do have buildings out here.Running a supermarket in America has never been harder. “They always talk about, you know, they don’t never have no buildings out here. “I’m looking very forward to this little building here in Callaway,” resident Debbie Spurlock said. “And also have the availability of more diverse shops in the city for them to be able to go to.”Ĭallaway residents are excited about the new store, and the differentiating grocery stores it will provide. “It’s about our residents having the ability to choose where they want to shop,” Cook said. In the next 30 days, debris will be cleared out of the lot and one house will be destroyed.
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But for us to be able to attract such a good brand and chain over in this area, that just shows that our growth and with the rebuild of Tyndall and the amount of population growth that we’re having here, it’s an added necessity.”Īldi will take a full block, once construction is completed. “Economic development growth for the city is always very important,” Callaway City Manager Ed Cook said. Two Egg family plans the town’s first-ever Christmas tree lighting