ALDI — Local services in Buena Park

TL;DR version of review: bring one quarter for your cart. Bring your own bags. Save tons of money on staple food items made by ALDI's in-house brands (Millville, Family Farms, etc), which is most of their product. Store is clean but doesn't play background music. Good experience.

I used to live in Kansas and would go to ALDI there. Glad to see they made it to the west coast. I've been eating their food since I was a kid.

ALDI is a weird experience if you are unfamiliar with it. They cut all corners they possibly can to save you, the customer, money. They have you use a quarter to put in the cart (you get it back when you return it) so that way they don't have to pay someone to return carts from the parking lot (keeps their employees working in the store). They don't have employees walking the aisles asking anyone if they need help. They don't have normal shelves, just boxes on boxes of product that are restocked. There is no deli or butcher (but they do have packaged meat - and they're decent). They DON'T BAG YOUR GROCERIES (gasp 😲)! This saves them time to get to the next customer (checkout is crazy fast for full cart loads of food). Bring your own bags or see if you can nab a box from an empty product off the shelf.

You're not going to find much in the way of exotic food here (even the Hispanic food section is only about 8 feet long), but what you are going to find is very low prices on everything. Especially things you usually buy. October 2016, $0.89 for a dozen eggs. $2 for whole wheat bread. $1.89 for sweet and salty almond bars (love those things). Produce is crazy cheap. $0.29/lb for bananas. $1.59/lb for grapes. They sell alternatives to lots of name brand items, and they have a great selection of it. They do sell some name brand things, but not a ton.

If you're worried about their brand name items because you're unfamiliar, ALDI has a RIDICULOUS guarantee on all their branded items: if you aren't satisfied, you return the item, get your money back, AND a free replacement of the item. Double guarantee.

Inside, there is also "ALDI Finds", which are limited-time items that the store sells, from groceries to household items like hampers to electronics. I think there were pillows in there last time I came. Sometimes there's great deals, but who knows what they'll have next time?

I'd highly recommend Aldi. This location is great, clean, but oddly quiet. Play some background music - otherwise all you hear is the loud drone of the freezers!...

Love aldi. Smaller store so some things will not be here like ICE. I describe Aldi as an Organic Costco for small families. Like Costco has the dependable brand Kirkland for a lower price and higher quality and quantity uve found Aldi to have the same tyoe of brand power but in less bulk...so almost like vostco ive found anything from the brand is usually above standards in quality vs. Price without the quantity. So if food for less and costco dont work for you because your onky a 1-2 person famiky Aldi is thee solution.

You need to bring a quarter if you want to use the grocery cart. When your done shopping and take the cart back the quarter is returned, but if you decide to leave it in the oarking lot your basically leaving the quarter for whomever decides to collect the cart.

Also note Aldi brand products are nit consistantly there. Some products, like costco, are not available everytime. So if you like a certain frozdn food there you have to make sure its a product they sell consistently. Their salmon patties are the bomb but they are onky there occasionally so if i see them i get a few boxes because i never know how long before they come back.

To reduce prices on organic prices, like costco, they do NOT have bags. If you do not bring bags or boxess to put your groceries in you will not get one.

Love this place but its not a convience store...its a specialty store with extremely reasonable prices and good ethics...

One last thing...again like Costco they have many high end products that arfe not food. They have a seasonal isle with nice products at low prices....for examokt i bought my gardening clogs rubber for 14 dollars there and saw them later for double the price not as good of a brand. If you have the extra 30-50 dollars to spend on non related grocery items they always suprise you with neat things you didnt kniw you needed until your there....the selection is not huge and it is limited and random but a pleasent...

My experience here was horrible. The guy at the register was in such a hurry and to make matters worse their erroneous credit card reader automatically made the mistake of making it look like I wanted to withdraw $100. I just held my card over the card reader and without selecting anything. When I was grabbing my items from the guy in a hurry he asked me to grab my pizza so he could get $100. I told him I didn’t want a $100 and I didn’t select cash back. He said he couldn’t take the money back and there was nothing they could do about it.

He radioed what had happened and some rude lady came over stating there was nothing she could do and there was a bank across the way Wells Fargo but didn’t know who I banked with (Well duh lady). I had to inform her it was a credit card and not related to a bank (What kind of advice and help is that just telling someone to redeposit money into a bank that they don’t bank with and not stopping to get more information about the situation to provide proper assistance?) I kept trying to explain to her what had happened and told her to check the cameras. Her constant response was there’s nothing we can do and tried to blame me for what happened. I asked to speak to a manager and she stated she was the manager.

This explains why the store looks the way it does and everyone there is in a hurry it’s a reflection of her because she was in a hurry to get me out of the store. I asked her if there was a number to call or anyone to contact that was above her and she just told me to call the number on the receipt. Now i’m stuck with a $25.25 withdraw fee that I didn’t want.

I won’t be going back to this poorly managed Aldi. I have shopped here for years and now you’ve lost a customer. Their customer service is poor. The manager said her name was Aracely maybe some above her can retrain her on customer service...