And Aldi also offers an unusual satisfaction guarantee: If you don’t like something you’ve bought there, they will both replace the item and refund your money. And most of those packing cases now sit on regular shelves. Worth noting: Aldi stores look less bare-bones than they once did, as the chain has extensively remodeled and upgraded the appearance of all its stores. And the “Aldi Finds” sections in each store carry housewares, outdoor items, linens and other domestic items that change constantly. The stores also carry limited-time specialty items that also vary throughout the year. A good number of the products Aldi carries are seasonal or occasional items that come and go according to the time of year. Aldi has the best selection of specialty cheeses of any of these stores save Trader Joe’s, and they often feature flavor combinations such as Irish Cheddar soaked in whiskey or herb-crusted Manchego. The company points with pride to the awards their products have won, and in contrast to years gone by, the quality of their products is uniformly high. About 85 percent of the products Aldi carries are their own private-label products. What you won’t find inside: A wide variety of fresh fish and seafood (they do sell some fresh fish), fresh baked goods or fresh flowers (see Lidl for those). What you’ll find inside: All of the supermarket mainstays, from produce to fresh meat to dairy to canned goods to frozen foods, including cleaning products and paper goods, plus a constantly changing selection of general merchandise and housewares. And it’s revived the model the late, lamented A&P used to become America’s grocer in its heyday: rely on its own brands and price them low. This granddaddy of the deep discounters, founded in Germany in 1946, is on a drive to become the second-largest grocer in America by total store count. More than 45 locations throughout the Philadelphia region The Aldi storefront on Ridge Avenue, one of the newer additions to the area’s selection of cheap grocery stores. Here’s what you can expect when you go to each store. And while they have those similarities in common, they do differ in some significant ways. Two have been around for decades, two others are relative upstarts, and one sits in a class by itself. There are five major players in the no-frills, deep-discount supermarket sector in Philadelphia and environs. Just remember, you’re not here for the aesthetics, you’re here to save money. Most of these stores look like warehouses because much of what they sell is sold directly out of their packing cases, and in some cases, out of packing cases stacked directly on top of pallets. And at Aldi and Lidl, you’d better bring a quarter with you if you want a shopping cart: shoppers at those two stores must pay a 25-cent deposit to unlock a shopping cart which they get back when they return the cart to the store entrance and relock it. If you don’t bring your own bags, though, you can buy them at the store. They don’t bundle the cost of supplying bags into the shelf prices. But if you’re fine with frozen fillets and prepackaged lunchmeat, you’ll be okay.Īnother thing you should expect to do when shopping at these stores: Bring your own bags. Something else you won’t find at these stores is service counters: If you want your lunchmeat sliced on the spot for you, or your fish cleaned and filleted, you will get none of that. And you won’t spend so much money, for the prices are lower - sometimes much lower - than at the regular stores. They also limit their selection to the most-frequently-purchased items and sizes, with some variations from this norm.īut because of this, you won’t spend what seem like hours finding what you want, because the stores are much smaller than the typical supermarket. In this world, you’re not overwhelmed by having to make so many choices, because there are fewer of them: the deep-discounters carry between 1,500 and 3,000 products in their stores, in sharp contrast to the 40,000 or more you will find at a typical supermarket. There is an alternative out there: the deep-discount supermarket. Just standing in the cereal aisle can induce anxiety attacks. But when you consider the mind-boggling number of items on the shelves of your local supermarket, the time it takes to find all the items on your list, the stuff you put in your cart that wasn’t on your list, and how much you spend doing all this, the pain many feel when shopping for food is understandable. Many people find grocery shopping a chore. Inside the new Aldi inside the Broadridge apartment development, one of the region’s best cheap grocery stores.
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