Re: OMG, just discovered Aldi's for food!
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2018, 03:49:27 AM »
I too recently discovered the joys of Aldi! We started shopping there a few months ago and now I'm totally hooked. We have to drive an extra 30 minutes from our closest Wal-Mart, but it ends up working in our favor because we limit our shopping to about once a week (versus popping in every other day for "just a couple things"). I gasped the other day when I went into a different grocery store and saw milk was $2.50 a gallon. The horror! Aldi's are $.98. We buy at least four gallons each time. Grocery shopping went from $200-250 per week to $100-150 a week feeding a family of 5. Still some trimming to do, but we're getting there.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2018, 03:51:26 AM by randomusername »
What state do you live in, randomusername? I can't believe you get milk for that price? In my state of NJ, Aldi charges $2.91 for a gallon of milk, and that is cheap relative to other supermarkets.
I don't know what their deal is with milk and egg prices. Our local Aldi is generally around $3 for milk (maybe $0.50 less than other groceries), but sometime they drop to the $1-2 range. Similar story with eggs. Standard price is slightly better than everywhere else and then suddenly they're $0.50/dozen. It's not an advertised sale, but maybe the intention is to be a loss leader? Maybe they're overstocked?
Then there's another Aldi I go to in Charleston, South Carolina (higher COL area) where the milk & eggs are always under $2 & $1 respectively.
Anyone have insights as to how Aldi prices these items?
I spoke to a local manager, and they told me it's based on the region, and the stores/competition nearby. So if there are several grocery stores right near the Aldi, they'll undercut them.
And yes, they absolutely do get overstocked sometimes depending on bulk purchases, or stores in same region may end up being remodeled and their stock gets shifted to sister stores at a steep discount - unadvertised sales technically, or the manager in that particular store is super-sales happy and pushes things to clearance/markdowns faster than other stores.
They also have the ability to mark things down based on their own arbitrary time line based off sell-by dates. One store I go to, they'll discount anything 2 days before the sell-by date - sometimes I pay pennies on the dollar. Another store, they won't discount until day of sell-by and only 50% is offered, if that. And yet another one refuses to sell things at all and would rather pull the items and trash them if you point it out that they're getting ready to expire and ask if they can discount the stock to get rid of it.