Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Aldi offers groceries at a discount price

Have you ever heard of Chazoo Fruit Rolls or Happy Harvest canned vegetables? Unless you’ve been to Aldi, chances are you haven’t. Aldi is a discount retailer with an international presence. The first store opened 40 years ago and there are now 700 Aldi stores in 26 states and 13 countries. Aldi is beginning to spread throughout the southeast and Fayetteville is one of their newest locations.

Greg Gaston is the store manager at Aldi. He has been with the company for two years and has been involved in establishing the presence in the south. He has worked in Greenville, South Carolina and Marietta, Ga. before opening the Jonesboro and Fayetteville locations. The staff of an Aldi is typically small, including a manager, an assistant manager, a management trainee and a cashier. A small staff is just one of the ways Aldi is able to offer such a deep discount to the consumers. Other ways the company cuts costs are by having customers bag their own groceries, charging a nominal fee for bags and urging customers to either recycle bags or bring reusable ones and by renting carts for a deposit of 25 cents. The customer gets their quarter back when they return the cart to the corral and this prevents stray carts and from having to hire someone to bag groceries and collect carts.

The other way that Aldi offers big discounts on products is by using private labeled goods. An example is the ketchup that Aldi sells. It is still manufactured by Hunts, it is just called something different. Aldi also offers special purchases each week on electronic goods or housewares. They are often priced 30-50 percent below market value. They also have a good produce section, with fresh produce coming in every other day.

Some products that Aldi sells are name brand and are not too different in price from a big name grocery store, but other products, such as bread, are marked well below the average price. Gaston stated that white bread is currently 55 cents a loaf, while wheat is 69 cents a loaf.

Gaston states that he has some regular customers, many of whom had shopped at other Aldi’s before. He is excited to be in town and feels that the Atlanta market will soon be growing as quickly as it is in other southeastern states.

Aldi is located on Ga. Hwy 85, near Lowe’s, in Fayetteville.

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