I’ve been shopping at ALDI on and off now for about a year.  My mother has been shopping there religiously for a few years now and tells everyone she knows that they have to shop at ALDI.  She is the one that got me to go there in the first place and now that I live closer to many of them, I go more.  However I still have to drive by a few traditional grocery stores so many times I stop at those stores for lack of saving time.

However, since my visit last month to the ALDI headquarters in Chicago, I find myself driving by the traditional stores more often and shopping at ALDI instead.  What changed my mind?  Learning more about the company and seeing the savings and value first hand, made me realize I was wasting money not shopping there.

Let me start off by saying that I thought that ALDI was a cheap store and only sold dented cans and low value items.  Does the image of the fruit dish above look like low value fruit?  I think that may have been because the first store I heard of in my state was in a low-income area.   We all make assumptions we shouldn’t and I am guilty of it as well.   And even though my mother told me otherwise, do we really ever listen to our mothers?  lol

Part of my visit to the ALDI headquarters in Chicago was a Blind Taste Test with some of their products paired up with the National Brand.  They don’t carry many National Brand items but the ones they had us try, they do carry.  Why and how do they carry those brands?  I’ll explain that a little later.

When we arrived they had samples of products for us to try but they didn’t tell us which one was ALDI private label and which one was the National Brand.  They weren’t looking for us to guess the ALDI brand, they wanted us to tell them which one we liked better.

I loved doing this and would love to set something like this up at home with my friends because I was amazed at how much fun it was.   Each time except for 2, I choose the ALDI private label over the National Brand as liking it better.   It just appealed to me more and these were brands I was using already.  So clearly ALDI took the time to find a product they wanted to replicate, but looked at how they can make it even better.  And in my opinion,  they really succeeded with a lot of them.

After we were done with our Blind Taste Test, we then moved on into another Kitchen and this time we were challenged to make some back to school lunches using only ALDI private label products.

They had a table set up for us filled with delicious looking food and we set out to make our sandwiches.  They had some of the ALDI test kitchen chefs there as well to help us and they were also going to be the judges.

I made something that I knew my oldest daughter would love and kept it as healthy and yummy as I could.  Here is my sandwich creation….

I used whole wheat bread and spread some ranch dressing on the bread rather than mayo.  Then I added grilled chicken, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and some celery bits to make it crunchy.  I then made mini fruit skewers for a side along with raisins.  This is something my daughter would gobble up for sure!

I didn’t win the challenge but there were a lot of great sandwich ideas that I will use for sure in this upcoming school year.

After that we moved into another room where they had some beautiful food displayed in such a way I thought I was on a cooking show!  There we met with the ALDI Food Stylist Janice Stahl and learned about what she does as a food stylist.  She also shared  how she has cut her budget in half by shopping at ALDI when styling and cooking food for her clients.   The value is there and the quality is awesome.

Then they served us dinner of some of the items that Janice shared with us.  I loved how pretty it all looked and it’s made me want to style my food more often now when I have guests over.  Maybe this will be a new thing for me and the money I save at ALDI, can go towards making my food look prettier!

The next day we visited a local ADLI store.  I’ve shopped at ALDI so this wasn’t my first time in the store, but it was a great opportunity to see and hear about how they are able to keep their prices so low.

If you haven’t shopped at ALDI before, here are a few things you need to know before you go…

• You need a quarter to use a carriage.   They don’t pay workers to fetch the carriages in the parking lot.  So to encourage you to return your shopping cart after using it, you have to insert a quarter to unlock it and then when you return it, you get your quarter back.  I think this is brilliant and a great way to cut costs and make us all not so lazy!
• You bag your own groceries.   They scan them and put them in a carriage and then once you pay you can go to the side where there is a counter and bag your groceries.   This speeds up the cashing out process which allows them to pay less cashiers and keep their costs low.
• You have to bring your own bags or buy them there.  There are no such things as free bags.  The stores that give them to you, are adding them into the costs of your groceries.  And since I bring my bags 85% of the time, I am paying for them even though I am not using them.  But not at ALDI.  If you forget your bags you are welcome to take the empty boxes they have on their shelves.  That also saves them man power to remove them, and cuts costs.
• They don’t stock shelves the way the traditional grocery stores do.  They open the boxes and stack them on top of each other.   This is a faster way to stock shelves so fewer employees are needed.  Another brilliant way to cut costs.
• They don’t accept coupons.  Remember I said above that they carry some National Brands at a lower price?  The reason they can do this is they can negotiate a lower price with the manufacturer because they aren’t accepting coupons.  Stores that accept coupons have to pay more for the product and in return will sell it for more.  So instead ALDI will sell a National Brand at a better everyday price, but won’t put it on sale and won’t accept a coupon.   Sometimes it may be better to pay $1.29 for something that may go on sale for $.99 at the traditional grocery stores, but may also be $1.79 full price.  At ALDI you always get it for the same price.

All those reasons I mentioned above help them to keep their costs down therefore they can sell items a lot less every single day.  They do run specials occasionally but you’ll probably find most items don’t change in price very often.  I’m OK with that.

I absolutely LOVED my time with ALDI in Chicago and I hope to work with them more so I can show you even more reasons why they are a great place to shop, even if they don’t take coupons!

Disclosure:  I received an all expenses paid trip to Chicago to visit the ALDI Headquarters.  I was not asked to blog about this but I wanted to share my experience with my readers.  And even though they fed me some really good food and share some great products with me, my opinions are 100% my own and this post has not been edited by ALDI or their PR Company.