And, if it's anything like the ones around here, by selling worse products and intentionally under-staffing their stores. Everything they sell is pre-packaged and you only interact with a human for 30 seconds at checkout (after having waited 20 minutes in line because there's only one checkout open most od the time).
They have a "cheap and efficient at all costs" attitude, with the costs being: overworked employees, terrible user experience and a whole bunch of unnecessary waste from packaging (especially with their stupid half plastic half paper bread bags that only exist to cust costs, but that a friend in the recycling industry tells me are basically unrecyclable despite both the materials being recyclable on their own).
I find the user experience amazing, it's really efficient to go through an Aldi. Check out is fast, shopping is fast due to standardized layout, not so many similar choices to overwhelm you so you don't have to decide which cherry tomato to buy etc.
Also I'm not sure where you get the unnecessary waste from packaging. They just put everything on the shopping floor as it's shipped to them. That's not extra packaging. Other stores just hide this from you.
On the half plastic half paper bags I agree, but that's the same in the other big chains in Germany, so it's at least not more wasteful than the others.
Also I've been to America, the other stores really had a lot of extra plastic packaging. Like unpeeled fruit. That's horrific.
Funny, it's the exact opposite for me. All our other stores also have their own standardised layouts and I have a far easier time remembering those than Aldi's, even though I've been to Aldis far more times that some of the other ones.
Checkout is immensely infuriating for me because it's clearly focused on getting me out of the way asap. I'll be standing in like for 10 or more minutes, then get rushed through checkout at a ridiculous speed. There's like 10cm of counter space so products start falling if I'm not putting them away fast enough. I have to put everything back in the cart and then sort things into bags to take home at the awkward shelf at the exit. It's efficient for them, but inefficient for me.
And I do actually like some choice - sometimes I want a cheap tomato because it's getting cooked or put in a salad anyways and sometimes I want the better more expensive one because it'll be used "raw" like on a sandwich.
As for packaging, I was talking about retail packaging. Like, in a regular store, even a small one, I can ask for X dag of sliced cheese and I'll get that much in a small light wrapper. In Aldi, it's pre-packaged in hard plastic of an unreasonable size and I just have to buy multiple packs if I need more cheese. Same with everything else, even some vegetables. Even cans are shrink-wrapped together sometimes! I legitimately observed my bins filling up far quicker during the time I used to always shop at Aldi.
// if any of this sounds unfamiliar, I'm not from Germany, so there might be regional differences
Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries? It's the same as RyanAir; I'd be happy to be stacked like a sardine for a three hour flight if it means significant cost savings and I get from point A to point B all the same.
> Why do you need to be wined and dined when buying groceries?
Where did you get that idea? I simply want the experience that used to be the bare minimum just some 10 years ago. Aldi (and other stores with a similar model) fails to deliver that and usually isn't cheaper enough to justify it. If you only care about price and have the time and energy to deal with them, feel free, but for me, unless they have something I need on sale, I see no reason to. Most other stores are faster, less rushed and the quality is better for at most a few % higher price.
