ALDI — Local services in South Bend

For what they do they’re the best! And they do quite a lot. The stores are small, so you can park close to the door. It’s amazing how many customers can fit into these little stores! Unlike that big box superstore that sells motor oil, bicycles, guns, clothes and home improvement items right beside groceries, once you’ve made all your selections they ring you up and get you out of there fast! Every cashier is super fast while also friendly. Nothing ever rings up at a higher price than it’s supposed to! You can use cash, but if you use any kind of card, go ahead and swipe it while they’re scanning your items then put your wallet away fast as you can and just see if you can get it into your pocket before your receipt prints out. That’s how fast they are! At first I would only buy fresh fruits and vegetables at Aldi. What blew my mind is their concern for quality. Rather than sell subpar quality produce they’ll leave all of an item off the shelf. It’s rare, but I have gone in there for a produce item that I always count on them having and seen in it’s place a different item and a sign stating, “Rather than put less than high-quality produce on our shelves, we are not selling (missing produce item) today. We’ll have some tomorrow”. I much prefer that to buying what appears to be a good bag of potatoes then when trying to prepare a meal cutting into them only to find out they are all rotten in the center despite looking fine on the outside. That has happened more than once at the big box stores. It’s scary how much an Aldi shopper can fit into their cart! Since my Aldi selections always include fresh produce I commonly have just a few items and don’t always need a cart. It’s disheartening to see in front of me someone with 46 million items crammed into their cart. However, 1) the average Aldi customer is surprisingly nice! Despite that they want to get out of there just as much as I do, those people quite often will ask me if I’d like to go ahead of them! Try waiting for that to happen in a big box store! 2) you can be behind 3 of those people and not wait as long in line as you do in an average big box store. That’s how fast the cashiers are. Everything rings up right away — no price checks! And as I said before, the correct price comes up the first time. And because they don’t bag anything for you, that also saves a ton of time ringing you up! Meanwhile, right at the checkout are some interesting offerings. I like the fresh cut flowers! Small but interesting snd beautiful bouquets at a ridiculously low price that anybody can afford as a nice “just for no reason” gift. The flowers last quite a long time after you get them home. Perfect when you’ve been together for a long time and she’d rather you didn’t waste $100 on something that will wither away in a few days. ALSO perfect if you’re seeing someone who’d prefer you waste lots of money on them because the relationship has no real future, so buy 3 and put them all together and it will LOOK like you wasted a ton of money on someone who doesn’t care about sharing a healthy financial future with you. There’s more I could say but nobody pays me for these reviews and I’ve got...

Aldi started as a discount grocery store in Chicago and local suburbs. I can remember when the first Aldi stores opened. Aldi was unique and differed from other grocery stores in the sense, to keep prices low, it was "cash only", BYOB; (Bring Your Own Bags), and they did not carry name brand groceries, only Aldi brand.

Of course, as Aldi grew into the store almost everyone knows today, they started accepting debit cards and credit cards, they offer WIC benefits and recently started carrying more name brand items.

For a while, Wal-Mart offered "price matching". There was a catch however, Wal-Mart matched big chain supermarkets like Kroger, but, if someone tried to have Wal-Mart price match an Aldi add, they were told flat out; " We don't price match Aldi. Wal-Mart doesn't price match Aldi because Aldi's selling price is below Wal-Mart's minimum markup price.

What is really surprising, despite low prices, Aldi's food quality still maintains a high standard. Not only are prices lower, a lot of not most of the produce and meat is fresher. More and more Aldi is competitive with Wal-Mart. With as much growing as Aldi is doing, I hope they don't succumb to ego like Wal-Mart has and maintain the low-price grocery store philosophy they have come to...

I used to think I hated grocery shopping. Turns out, I just hated the grocery stores I was visiting. At Aldi's everything is so nice that the customers respond to the vibe. You put a quarter in to get a cart, but there's always someone offering to give you theirs. Two or three times I've had someone ahead of me in line let me go first because I had fewer items. The cashiers are so fast I practically had to run next to the conveyor belt to keep up with my items -- and the employees are so nice! You can buy wacky stuff, too. At Christmas, my family couldn't get over these silly salt and pepper automatic grinders with lights on them (so you can see how much spice you're grinding out). The only thing I can see that needs improved is the regular bread. Though it's never expired, it always...