ALDI — Local services in North Bergen

I have known about the wonderful cost saving virtues of Aldi for at least 15 years thanks to my dad who lives in the Midwest. When the store opened up a few years ago on Tonnelle & 82nd an North Bergen New Jersey I was the first on line. Why?

Jeffrey bezos with your 200 billion dollar net worth may not need to read this but for the rest of us the biggest reason Aldi rocks is the prices!

I've been a loyal Walmart customer for years but Aldi convinced me with its rock bottom prices on all the staple proteins, milk, fish cheese, cereals, canned goods, cat food, breads, spices, oils, pasta, treats and cookies, pizza, frozen specialties, and let's not forget their constantly changing array of "seasonal" Aldi finds.

I absolutely fall into the Joe lunch box category. You know, the month is long on the paycheck is shorter and shorter or so it seems.

After housing my biggest expense bar none is feeding my three teenage boys...so food.

On average my overall grocery bill is 22% less than the Walmart supercenter down the road. it's 45% less than shopping at ShopRite and depending on what I'm buying can be considerably more saved.

Want to know before you go:

They do not stock 100,000 different items so you may have limited choices but generally you can cover 80 to 90% of your basic shopping list plus those one-off items you need for that "recipe that you saw online".

With the pandemic daily or four times per week going shopping is a thing of the past at least for us so plan accordingly. Anything that you can store on a shelf or in a freezer stock up.

Perishable items like fruits and veg usually need to be consumed within three to five days max dor they start to get a little less than fresh looking.

I will buy things that last longer such as onions and potatoes with no problem. Things like spinach in the boxes or fresh salads stuff I typically will buy just stuff I'm going to use in the next two to three days.

Aldi keeps its prices low I think because there's a lot of off-brand products on the shelves.

In most cases the stuff is absolutely fine. At least for my kids pallets the exceptions tend to be minimal such as their cereal tends to be cardboard-like according to the kids.

Their millville granola bars are hit or miss.

Other than that pretty much everything is good and no one will notice a difference from the brand you've been buying forever.

Again the biggest reason to shop at Aldi is the cost savings. Pre-Aldi my grocery bill for the month was around $1,800 give or take depending on how fancy I wanted to get in the kitchen and how much I would spend at whole foods which is a very rare one-off exception these days.

At Aldi if I'm cooking up a storm all month long my overall food bill ranges around $1150 to $1,200 MAX.

Just in terms of what $100 will buy me...at Aldi I walk out of there with six to eight shopping bags full of goodies where a ShopRite I might only have three or four bags.

Definitely a huge fan and if you have not tried Aldi yet do yourself a favor and give it a whirl at least a couple times. Again depending on how picky your kids are they may push back on some of your choices but I have found kids are resilient and after eating it two or three times they don't notice the difference any longer, you will save a considerable amount of money...

I wish I could give no stars. My cashier today was FRANK. BOLD LIGHT SKIN GUY. It took allot in me to not punch this man in the face. Belittled me for ringing my stuff accidentally in another person's bill. My husband was waiting for me but I held my peace cause my husband would have come back in for him. Aldi how dare you have this man that clearly has mental issues. I have witnessed him picking fights with other customers. I have felt bad for him but this time it was me Frank get some help you need badly . This man is a ticking time bomb. If anyone happens to get him as a cashier please have your video on. Frank you are not doing people a favor we the people are the ones keeping businesses going. How dare you Aldi and FRANK. Aldi your produce suck. Always rotting . I guess it matches your...

Although Aldi has been a favorite grocery store of mine, I recently had a negative experience with the store supervisor, Lorena. Despite just completing my grocery shopping, when I requested to use the restroom, I was informed that it had been closed for an hour, and the supervisor stated there was nothing she could do to accommodate me. The perplexing aspect of the situation is that if the restroom had been closed for only an hour, it seems reasonable to expect a certain level of flexibility in accommodating a customer's needs. Opening the restroom for a brief moment doesn't appear to be an insurmountable challenge, especially when considering the inconvenience it posed to a paying customer. This experience has left me disheartened, as it contradicts the positive image I previously had of Aldi's...