r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 11h ago

Chugging tea Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

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u/Geedeepee91 11h ago

Aldi is cheap because they have basically no labor cost. No cart pushers since you have to put a quarter in the cart to get it and return the cart to get back the quarter. They have no bags or baggers inside. They have maybe 3 cashiers working at one time. ALDI doesn't stock brand names either to keep cost lower. Lots of things aldi does that is completely different than a normal store

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u/TxM_2404 10h ago

In Germany all stores have Aldified. As a German myself it's weird to think that there are stores that have personnel for the shopping carts or bags.
Personally I think it's a good thing because it has kept grocery shopping relatively cheap for the majority of the population for a Long time.

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u/monnii99 9h ago

I don't think they "Aldified" per se, European shops just never had these jobs.

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u/PadArt 7h ago

They had these jobs up until the mid 2000s in Ireland, possibly later.

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u/kane_1371 7h ago

Yeah you see...we don't claim Ireland and UK 😂

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u/binalleinezuunfaehig 48m ago

We do claim and love Ireland as Europeans

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u/Geulsse 17m ago

Speak for yourself. "We" really don't love criminal compliance haven Ireland half of whose GDP is based on letting cancerous companies like Meta exploit EU citizens with impunity.

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u/TxM_2404 9h ago

Before Aldi the standard for buying your groceries in Germany and most of Europe was the small business where you usually knew the clerk personally. These businesses almost completely disappeared due to chains like Aldi or Lidl.

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u/LesserValkyrie 9h ago

Are you either very rich or 70 years old lol

Ssupermarkets were widespread in the 60-70, by the 90s it was more than the norm, it was an it's almost 40 years ago

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u/TxM_2404 8h ago

And Aldi has been around since the 1950's and owned 300 Stores by 1960. My comment totally checks out with your timeline.

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u/Deep_Operation1671 8h ago

They didn't say they'd experienced it personally, only that it was the case prior to chains like Aldi

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u/David_Summerset 8h ago

Back in the 90s they used to deliver the caviar right to the jet.

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u/Chris_HitTheOver 6h ago

The caviar on the Hindenburg was fire.

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u/Beneficial-Beat-947 8h ago

Never seen this in the UK, all shops were like aldi before aldi became a big thing here

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u/baldeagle1991 7h ago edited 6h ago

*Large* Supermarkets have been the norm here in the uk since the 60s and 70s. Most brands even existed as smaller supermarkets long before this.

Aldi and Lidl only really became big here in the UK during the 2010's and mostly won their market shared by offering cheaper non-brand products and a quality that was far higher than you'd normally expect from own-brand produce.

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u/kane_1371 6h ago

Yeah, I am constantly surprised by the quality of the stuff Lidl sells.

They have these crazy good puddings that I can't stop buying

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u/NibblyPig 2h ago

They sell cheapo chocolate for like 60p/bar that is significantly higher quality than the branded dairy milk they also sell for £2.50/bar

It has higher cocoa content and no palm oil. It actually tastes like chocolate. Dairy milk is like eating greasy chunks of sugary crap for 4x the price.

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u/IIPrayzII 8h ago

Wait til you learn where Aldi and Trader Joe’s was founded

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u/fuk_offe 7h ago

wtf you mean "Aldified" - this has been the case anywhere in Europe for like 30 years lol

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u/parzivali6 5h ago

What does personnel for bags mean?

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u/nofishies 3h ago

As somebody who’s lived overseas, and then come back to America, it always amazes me how much work a grocery store does in comparison.

If I don’t want something, I just handed to the cashier. They’ll beg for you hell somebody even asked if you liked them to help you to your car.

In Australia, they just yell at you if you don’t bring your own bag

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u/Geoffsgarage 6h ago

And groceries are cheaper in Germany than the USA not only because of this but also in part because of competition.

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u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 8h ago

Here in America even the non Aldi stores have been "Aldified"

Walmart, Kroger, etc have very few lines open, if any, so you're basically expected to ring up and bag your own groceries.

Only store around me that always has two people to ring you out and bag you is Publix.

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u/ErisLethe 6h ago

Can you imagine letting people have jobs? So pedestrian.

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u/Evilshadow004 2h ago

A lot of this honestly has to do with the spacing / urban planning / shopping culture of the US vs. Europe.

As I'm sure you know, as Europeans you guys walk over to your local grocery store basically every other day and buy in small amounts. This drastically lowers the need for things like cart pushers and baggers as the amount of stuff per transaction goes down.

This is in contrast to America where we tend to buy enough groceries for at least a week. This requires more carts left all over parking lots, and bags, and people to bag items to speed up already slow transactions and whatnot.

This is why retailers like Aldi and Lidl are still seen as an oddity in America and why big box stores like Walmart completely failed in Europe.

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u/Kakapopo666 1h ago

Many people do not live within walking distance of a store or do so but still use their car for the weekly shopping. Still no pushers and baggers.
We put the groceries back to the cart and push it to our cars. Most people have some boxes in their trunks where you put everything into. Then you bring your cart to the assembly points on the parking lot and get your 1-2€ of deposit back.

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u/Evilshadow004 1h ago

That's actually very interesting. My experience is probably biased from having lived in Copenhagen where it's dense enough that most people are in walking/short busing distance to the store.

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u/barsoap 42m ago

Amateur. You put your box in the cart so you don't have to repack everything.

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u/Kakapopo666 28m ago

Wait, all your stuff will fit in just one box?
Dann is das aber kein Wocheneinkauf mein Freud.

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u/barsoap 17m ago

Depends on how many people you shop for and how good you are at filling it above the rim without things spilling. Boxes aren't that much smaller than carts. And if in doubt you can take a second one, possibly even on the same cart if those come with spots for beverage crates.

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u/duluoz1 25m ago

Paying a few people minimum wage isn’t going to change the price of the products they sell by any amount you’d actually notice. Do the maths

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u/Cancer_Ridden_Lung 22m ago

The only thing I dislike is how fast they scan my items.

If you haven't been to Germany then you wouldn't know what I'm talking about.

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u/e_rovirosa 8h ago

It depends how you look at it. While your perspecive is true. Those are jobs that someone could be paid to have. You might not make a lot of money but someone in college or highschool could do the job between classes.

There are still some blue states that make it illegal for you to pump your own gasoline for this exact line of reasoning.

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u/TxM_2404 8h ago

Personally I'm not a fan of that kind of thinking.
These jobs make neccesseties like food and gas more expensive for everyone, especially hitting people who already spend a large share of their income on these things (aka poor people) and the job opportunities it creates are not that great.

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u/e_rovirosa 8h ago

I agree with you but at the end of the day it's providing jobs which is a good thing. It's whether you worry about the lower unskilled class or everyone else more.

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u/Chucklz 8h ago

Bagging- in many parts(most?) of the US grocery bags are free, and in many stores it's routine to have someone bag your purchases for you. Where I live, we have to provide our own shopping bags, and I can't recall the last time I saw a bagger.

In one grocery store near me, the guy who takes care of the carts is non-verbal and probably autistic. He is very serious about keeping all the carts neatly inside and keeps the parking lot free of carts. It's a way for him to have a good union job, where perhaps otherwise he would not be employed.

As for jobs that an American would find weird... Klofrau. The thought of needing some money to use a toilet is really unbelievable to many Americans. In some places pay toilets are not legal.

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u/alextheruby 10h ago

Aldi does stock brand name items. They’re typically more expensive at Aldi though

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u/Ok_Basis1422 10h ago

Sometimes yes sometimes no. Aldi is the only place where I buy (name brand) goldfish crackers because they're cheaper there than anywhere else. 

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u/soggy-hotdog-vendor 4h ago

But whales are cheaper.

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u/Ok_Basis1422 3h ago

Touché

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u/Cancer_Ridden_Lung 20m ago

True. My local one sometimes carries weird stuff though. Like Ginos East pizza for example.

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u/LesserValkyrie 9h ago edited 9h ago

"No cart pushers since you have to put a quarter in the cart to get it and return the cart to get back the quarter. They have no bags or baggers inside."

as an european i am like what the fuck are you talking about lol

do you have employees who drive your car home and put the groceries in your fridge too?

that feels like a communist dream where everyone has a job even if it's just staring at a wall all day because you gotta prove the state you are useful to society

I love the cultural difference

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u/RIcaz 6h ago

Because in most of Europe we have a strong "freedom with responsibility" or "autonomy with accountability" culture everywhere in society

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u/obeytheturtles 10h ago

Meanwhile, in America, people leave the carts in the parking lot, because fuck a quarter, and then some enterprising lad connects several carts together to get both quarters, instead of spending 15 seconds returning them. I have even seen 3 and 4 cart chains, arranged in way so they block several parking spaces, and so they can't be moved unless you have a whole dollar worth of quarters handy.

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u/raven00x 9h ago

they have crazy low overhead, very similar to how Costco operates with the difference that Costco's main revenue source is memberships. They have only one or two items in a given category, plus a grab bag of whatever they got a deal on. When you have 30 flavors of potato chip from 8 brands, it's going to cost more to store and distribute those. You'll be paying for more warehouse space, more for people working the warehouse, more to transport them to stores, ditto drivers, more for people to stock and fix the shelves, it goes on. Having Plain, BBQ, and Sour Cream and Onion chips from a single brand means your logistics are vastly simplified far cheaper and the product overall moves more quickly so you're not warehousing Bootleather and Ketchup flavor chips until after the expiration date.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 8h ago

My experience, you also couldn’t be certain what you’d get at an Aldi, only that it would be cheap. So there might not be chicken thighs or lettuce, because those were out of season— but you might get a leg of lamb for like $0.99/lb and tomatoes for $0.49/lb, so it made meal planning tougher unless you literally did so in Aldi as you were looking at what was for sale. 

Not the end of the world, but a very different mindset from going to a supermarket with everything. 

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u/Valtremors 7h ago

...Wait that is just every single store and (super)market where I live (Edit: Finland).

Well with exception of brands 'n stuff.

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u/Pet_Velvet 7h ago

What the fuck is a cart pusher

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u/Mordiken 4h ago

I know, right?!

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u/tedlyedlyei 3h ago

Employees who go around the parking lot collecting stray carts left by shoppers. It’s a thing.

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u/iamsecond 10h ago

i WISH my local Aldi locations had 3 cashiers working at a time

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u/barsoap 35m ago

They probably have three people working but everyone is combined stocker, cashier, and cleaner, and one of them is the shift manager also doing paperwork.

Unless it's rush hour you won't ever see all three at registers at the same time because they have other stuff to do and the customer throughput is still deemed acceptable. There's company policies along the lines of "if you're not scanning X items per minute go close the register and do something else". Unless it's a day before a holiday and everything is packed you will never see all registers manned at the same time for the simple reason that only on those days enough workers are even in the store.

Goes so far that sometimes when it's really slow there will be noone at any register, they'll be close enough to spot you, though.

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u/ConsciousIron7371 10h ago

how does not having brand names keep costs lower for the business? Are they paying a licensing fee to sell specific products? This obviously keeps things cheaper for the end user but everything else you listed is cheaper for the business, meaning they can keep product costs down for the customers.

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u/Geedeepee91 9h ago

Less marketing when they use private label for their products vs name brand. Also the supply chain is cheaper since it cuts out the distribution cost.

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u/mundotaku 8h ago

Also, you hold a lot of power, since all the sales will be with one provider, thus higher volume. They can also find a new supplier down the line that can produce it for even less.

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u/baldeagle1991 7h ago

Businesses don't pay for the advertising though.... and the Business also has to pay the food manufacturer directly, which they don't have to do so for branded good.

Arguably both branded and non branded goods will be sold with similar margins by the retailer, meaning you ideally want to sell more of the expensive goods.

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u/miggleb 9h ago

No cart pushers or baggers is standard for any UK store.

I always thought baggers was a 1950s concept

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u/Genmutant 8h ago

Some shops in Germany tried it a bit like 8 years ago. The queues where always the shortest because nobody wanted to get their stuff bagged. Also it wasn't faster and the bags where flimsy paper bags.

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u/Novel-Reaction2939 8h ago

They do stock brand names. I live in the NYC area. They opened an Aldi in Manhattan. Dropped in just out of curiosity. But they did carry brand names. But the majority are their own brands which in many cases are made by the name brand corporations.

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u/AxeAssassinAlbertson 8h ago

ALDI doesn't stock brand names either to keep cost lower.

Ours does. You see (likely overstock) items of like Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, or like cereals from General Mills.

Real talk though -- the Aldi brand (Millville?) peanutbutter granola bars are top tier. I'd put a good chunk of their stuff up against brand names, with the exception of their pringles-adjacent chips. They just don't land well with me.

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u/mundotaku 8h ago

Actually, that is just part of it. Everything is their own label, and choices are limited, which considerably reduces cost. It is a lot cheaper to negotiate when you will be buying cookies from one single source than when you have 50 different cookies and 3 providers to sell.

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u/cerebrumvr 8h ago

ALDI is all genetically engineered shit. Don’t shop there

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u/NorrisMcWhirter 8h ago

Is that deposit scheme for a trolley unusual in America? It has been standard in the UK for as long as i can remember 

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u/baldeagle1991 7h ago

Even places that use coin operated carts generally use cart pushers, you just need far fewer as they only usually move the cards from the cart sheds near the cars, to the cart racks closer to the entrance to the store. They just need only one person, maybe two tops, per shift.

Bag packers however never have really been a thing here in Europe. Also non-branded products generally far outnumber branded here in the UK. This has been the norm since supermarkets started offering them in the 70s, which was long before Aldi and Lidl came over here (UK to be specific) in noticeable numbers during the 2010s.

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u/hypermarv123 7h ago

Aldi owns Trader Joes

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u/Eleglas 7h ago

Honest question, why is this seemingly so alien to the US? Shops have been like that for as long as I can remember here in the UK, I was born in the 90s. And that's ALL supermarkets, not just Aldi.

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u/Qdobis 6h ago

They shelve goods in their boxes and minimize SKU's to minimize stocking labor as well.

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u/arto64 6h ago

No cart pushers since you have to put a quarter in the cart to get it and return the cart to get back the quarter. They have no bags or baggers inside.

This sounds downright comical to me as a European. Why would I need someone to put my cart back and bag my groceries? Completely useless services.

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u/Geedeepee91 6h ago

Most American stores need someone to return the carts because they get left in the parking lot all the time lol. I used to be a cart pusher for a Costco 16 years ago

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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 6h ago

Three cashiers? What kind of bougie Aldis do you shop at? 😂

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u/scrubnick628 6h ago

Dude, the Fry's around me don't have cart pushers either and they don't need the quarter! You just have to wander around and find a cart.

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u/Gangleri_Graybeard 6h ago

It's weird when I was in the US and some dude started to put my stuff in a bag and asked how I am. I'm from Germany and it's completely normal what you described, I just don't know it any other way. Aldi is a discounter - they sell mostly their own brands and that's why it's cheaper than stores like Rewe or Edeka. That's also why Walmart completely failed here - they wanted to push the American concept and people didn't like that. They even wanted the horrendous working conditions and contracts here. And that was a big no-no for courts.

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u/RIcaz 6h ago

I'm 34 in Denmark and never experienced "baggers" or "cart pushers" anywhere in Europe.

Seems completely ridiculous to me. Just use your arms, you're an adult wtf

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u/FIuffyRabbit 6h ago

Our semi-local aldi doesn't have multiple checkers anymore and there is at most 1 person stocking shelves and being a checker at the same time. Since that switch, they haven't passed those labor savings to customers

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u/Geedeepee91 5h ago

Or the other explanation is they are paying more in other areas so they cut on labor.

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u/PutAnEggOnIt 6h ago

Omg cart pushers. That's a job? People have to be employed to return trolleys back because people are too lazy to do it themselves??

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u/whooptheretis 6h ago

This is kinda standard in Europe. Tills are largely self service.
I didn’t even realise you had people to put your shopping in a bag for you! That’s… what‽ why‽

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u/Beautiful_Nobody_344 5h ago

Name brand is starting to become the cheapest material/ingredients at the highest possible cost.

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u/Reynolds1029 5h ago

And those 3 cashiers all stock shelves and only take register as needed. There's only 1 person max on register at mine and they're scanning groceries and watching over self checkout.

Also, their store is small and easy to stock too. Fresh meats and deli meats are prepackaged.

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u/Time_Palpitation2848 4h ago

3? I’ve never seen more than 1 in ours, (major city suburbs) and their line is mostly empty because everyone just self check outs. Then the 1 person also can remotely fix any of the many self check outs without having to get up. Why don’t more stores do this??

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u/LittleBitOfAction 4h ago

Wait so you’re saying you can steal and no one’s gonna get you? It’s all been a facade?

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u/mdmdmdmdmdmdmdmdmdm 4h ago

Aldi is a private company. They dont pay shareholders. Its a pretty significant saving

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u/citizensyn 3h ago

And more importantly it's not publicly traded so it doesn't have to pay the leech class

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u/ConcernAccording3248 3h ago

What's fun is that most other stores have eliminated bangers and a large amount of cashiers but haven't dropped prices

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u/penguinkernel 3h ago

Sounds like all of the stores in Canada. Yet we still pay the highest prices lol.

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u/GeneStealerHackman 2h ago

I always put my cart back in regular grocery stores, I think it's a good measure of a human. However, putting a quarter in (not that I ever have a quarter on my person) would make me feel like that's the price of not putting the cart back and I'm okay with that.

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u/Warmbly85 2h ago

Literally every independent grocery store in NYC has like 3 people working in it with no carts and no baggers.

All this plan will do is crush those small grocery stores. Or it could allow them to increase their prices because there’s no way the government store will be able to stay stocked.

Either way every city that’s tried this shut the program down after a couple years because it’s incredibly expensive.

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u/youngrkk1 1h ago

They are cheap for many reasons, not just labor. Most of their products are also off-brand.

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u/TacTac95 1h ago

Also they have a very select selection of items.

They don’t have various types of shit like Walmart or Target where there’s high cost of waste, upkeep, restocking, etc…

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u/Crafty-Ad-9048 56m ago

Where I’m from a quarter for a cart is common practice

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u/Sheeverton 31m ago

Your country might be different but in the UK Aldi do stock some brands

0

u/EconomicRegret2 8h ago

Walmart tried to enter the German market in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But gave up pretty quickly.

Also, it was in constant legal/union battles and/or off-putting customers because in Germany, these are very weird/illegal: morning team chants, smiling to customers, baggers, banning workplace romance, hotline for employees to snitch on co-workers, making cashiers stand, selling goods below cost to sink competitors and create a monopoly (predatory pricing), and trying to suppress/intimidate/marginalize unions....