What Is Aldi?
Aldi is a German based retailer that has been established on the Australian East Coast and is now opening stores in SA (4 so far) and WA (soon). It has a more limited range than say a Woolworths or Coles. But the prices are much cheaper than those stores.
Pros and Cons
So the pros are that Aldi, as I have said, is generally a lot cheaper than a conventional retailer. The quality is surprisingly good too – Aldi has won awards for it’s cheese and wine, for example. (Wine is not available in SA as yet I’m afraid). Aldi mostly sell their own brands, with some exceptions. For example if you want to buy toothpaste, they sell Colgate. But I will be trying Dentitex Sensitive Plus Whitening.
Aldi cleverly use product packaging that looks a lot like the market leaders. So my Dentitex looks a lot like the equivalent Colgate.
When we lived in Orange, we visited Aldi a few times, but stopped going mostly. That was because we generally needed to do two shops (to get all of the things that we needed), and because we found the new way of shopping a little off-putting (more about this in the cons). However I can say that we were able to do a full shop this time. It looks like Aldi now have a fuller line of products , along with better meat, fruit and veg (or so it appeared to me).
The cons are that it can be crowded. You may not be able to get your decaf tea (Aldi are you reading this?!). The checkout can be a bit stressful to the uninitiated – you really need to bring a trolley, as the checkout operator will not pack your bags but push them through at great speed. You then put them in your trolley, and pack them at another counter. You need a gold coin or an Aldi token to get the trolley (though this is a pro I think as you won’t see Aldi trolleys polluting your street). Also you need to bring your own bags (not a big deal for South Aussies as many of us do that already).
Aldi Lust
You may be overcome by what I call Aldi Lust. This happens when you see the incredibly priced Special Buys in the middle aisle. Glenys fell for this when she saw a $99 Egg Chair. She tells me an Egg Chair can cost $500 more than that, so we bought it. Our car was filled with this huge box. It is a good thing we didn’t also fall for the $299 5.5 kg washing machine.
The Egg Chair looks pretty good. It has been made under an Aldi brand called Gardenline (Aldi use many sub brands for their product lines). Here it is, assembled:
One Comment on “Aldi Lust”
Went up to Aldi yesterday for an egg poacher. Unfortunately they were all sold out – you need to be quick!