ALDI — Local services in Champaign

Great place to go if you are on a tight budget. They keep prices low (and by that I mean really low) by having guests return carts, they make you pay for grocery bags if you don't bring your own (or you could forgo the bags and take their bulk boxes for free), the staff are restocking continually as you shop. The selection is hit and miss and they often sell out of things but Walmart and Meijer are a stone's throw away so it's not a huge hassle. There's no self checkout, so you always interact with a real person, and the staff are always super efficient and helpful. They do things like donate their perishables before they expire, and someone has actually been through the trash there to help me when I accidentally threw something away. It culminates in a community feeling in a time when that's pretty rare (it's not uncommon for another guest to offer me a cart or a quarter as I'm walking in). I generally go here first for...

I love Aldi's! I don't know why I never knew about these guys but they're great! Their generic brand is good, a lot of the products I get from them are the "healthier" option (as in fewer ingredients, readable ingredients, and a bunch of healthy advertising that I'm not sure is actually legitimate, but that I buy into) and they seem to run cheaper I think. They're kind of different from a regular store though, like a mix between sams club and walmart and what I imagine a farmers market is like; the inventory switches up pretty often, they have boxes that you put your groceries in, you have to buy bags if you want them, and also you have to have a quarter when you come here. I never carry change so this part is definitely a pain, but you have to put a quarter into this thing to release the shopping...

Store has always been clean and generally well stocked. Checkout lines can get congested sometimes, but they're pretty good at getting people through. Produce, meat, and dairy are all excellent.

As of 2022, still one of the better places in town to shop, even with the industry-wide inflation.

2024, still rocking reasonable prices for most things. They've gone in pretty heavy with self checkout though, but they're by far the fastest and least frustrating checkout stations I've seen. I can usually get through a whole cart without issues or it failing to scan or being more laggy than my great grandpa on a...