OT: Walmart facing competition!

[Red Green]

"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in news:xnobl.13158$ [e-mail]:

There are two around me Ed. There are super Walmarts all around them. The Aldi's thrive.

They are NOT a full supermarket. Their website even states this and says you should go there first on your regular grocery shopping trip then go to the grocery store. I've been totally satisfied with what I get there. They also offer a 2x quality refund.

They do surprising things to cut costs. Your stuff is run across the checkout scanner and just piled in your cart. When done, you move off to a long wall counter to do your own packing.

No credit cards. Debit and cash.

Don't get nervous the first time you go to get a cart outside and find you have to stick a quarter in to get it released from the bunch. The quarter come out when you return the cart by reconnecting it. You don't find carts laying around the parking lot to be hustled by employees. Oh, and if you unload your cart in the car and start to return it for your quarter, someone who is about to enter the store from the lot may come to you, give you a quarter and take your cart.

Lastly, no Cheerios by brand.

[benick]

Doesn't take much to fascinate ya , huh??? What did you get fired from Walmart or banned for shoplifting??????

[mm]

Although the dictionary doesn't say it, I believe a supermarket was a combination of a grocery market, fruit and vegetable market, butcher shop, fish market, and bakery. Or at least more than one of those. So I think it is possible to have small supermarkets if they sell the right things.

I actually know a supermarket here, that started around 1990, that is a partnership of several guys who each had separate stores in the categories above.

There is an Aldi about a half mile from here. I've been there once. I've never bought food other than a candy bar at Walmart, but I wasn't impressed by the food at Aldi's. Sometimes off-brands are fine, but something they're not. For example, off brand canned corn seems to be cut off more closely to the cob, and it has hard, inedible parts at the bottom of many kernels. It ruins the whole experience. :) I could check out other canned foods, but I gave up and just buy Del Monte, which I don't think Aldi's had.

[mm]

Sometimes I eat cookies or something before checking out, and then I ask the cashier for a discount because the package has been opened.

I'm usually eating and laughing at the same time, so no one has given me one.

[mm]

I've bought a couple of those roto chickens. They looked so good but they tasted so bad. Not bad actually, but sub-par. I'd rather go to Kentucky Fried Chicken where the food is good.

Or buy my own chicken and cook it. Unfortunately, very hard to get a whole chicken cut up at many stores, and I don't like to wait until the butcher cuts one up. And I definitely don't like paying extra per pound to eat the same piece over and over again. I like the variety of all the pieces.

[SMS]

It's a good time for them to expand, with all the empty commercial real estate available. They could start with the 149 empty Mervyn's stores, the Rite Aid stores that are beginning to close, or some of the empty supermarket spaces that companies like Albertson's abandoned and that have been empty for years.

[KLS]

I'm an occasional Aldi shopper; I appreciate how little I spend there. I don't mind the limited selection (1,300 regular items) as that makes shopping there a quick trip and greatly reduces impulse buying. The canned stuff is perfectly fine for cooking with, like the diced tomatoes, the broth, the beans. Cheese is cheap. I don't buy their frozen crap, though. I bring my own bags or use their boxes, and I usually have enough cash on me for my small total bill.

But closer to my home is a similarly designed local grocery with three locations: limited hours, bags cost $.10 each, carts are available free, credit cards are accepted, and the selection is better with the same pricing. They've got a huge Goya section for the Puerto Rican community and a huge Cento section for the Italian community, and I like all that selection. The beef selection is limited (beef is expensive in general), but the pork and chicken options are almost endless and perfect for the price point. When they opened, the special was pork shoulder butt for $.69 a lb. Plus they carry a few name brands at much lower prices than the local mega-grocery. Produce is very good, unlike at Aldi. This store seems to be trying to tap into the potential Aldi customer base while offering a shopping experience tailored to the local community at far better prices than the local mega-grocery. I go there almost exclusively now and just hit BJ's and the other grocery for stuff this store doesn't have.

[Jim Redelfs]

The last plastic I ate tasted like WM's hot chicken wings.

[Jim Redelfs]

No doubt she's pleasantly surprised that you aren't like too many others that don't bother.

[Jim Redelfs]

Talk to the Deli Department Manager. S/he may have useful information and may be able to accommodate your need.

There's a good reason the roasted chicken is placed near the grocery entrance: The flavorful odor of the food sells a lot of the product - and encourages the purchase of OTHER groceries after you pass by.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Buy whole chickens and cut them up yourself. It's not hard to do and it doesn't take a long time. I learned to do it when I was a teenager.

Cindy Hamilton

[mkirsch1]

Oh, you mean the mold store?

Back in my less affluent days I tried shopping at Aldi to stretch my dollar. Most of the food I bought there would turn to mold within a day or two. The day I found moldy food in the freezer section, was the last day I bought anything in there.

[Steve Barker]

that is just pure bullshit.

[George]

You can't offer anything meaningful or any form of rebuttal so you went for the personal attack. That really gives gravitas to you.

[LouB]

Bet he has no clue what "gravitas" means.

Lou

[Red]

If they don't take food stamps they will never compete with WM. I think half the grocery line customers pay with them.

[Ed Pawlowski]

You put that on 'taters

[Joe]

Purty good with biscuits, too.

Joe

[KLS]

Aldi does take food stamps, and many people wisely shop there with them.

[Caesar Romano]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:06:15 -0500, KLS wrote Re Re: OT: Walmart facing competition!:

Yes sir. Most of the food stamp shoppers I see in the market look very wise indeed.