When I received an email asking me whether I’d be interested in doing a post series on Aldi grocery stores, I jumped at the opportunity. Funny story – because of the name, I used to think that Aldi was a fancy-schmancy European grocery story with prices similar to Whole Foods. Imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, I was reading my favorite budgeting blog (Money Saving Mom) and read that she recommends Aldi. That’s when I figured out that Aldi is certainly NOT ‘Whole Paycheck.’ In fact – it’s the opposite!
Aldi is a true no-frills shop that nixes many of the ‘comforts’ that you probably think are par for the course at a grocery store. By eliminating services like cart round-up and bagging, they can seriously reduce prices.
My blog friend Meghann is also participating in this promotion, and I read through the comments about her first Aldi grocery trip with interest. While there were many Aldi fans, it seemed that a lot of people had the impression that Aldi didn’t have nice ambiance or had yucky produce.
My usual grocery store is Trader Joe’s.
There are a lot of things that I love about TJ’s. The prices are much lower than our other grocery chain (Harris Teeter), and there are many specialty items, like gluten-free bread.
Most weeks, I go to the grocery store at least twice: once on Sunday and again mid-week. The Sunday trip is the big trip, and the mid-week trip is to fill up on produce. If I’m making any special recipes, I also end up going to Harris Teeter. One of the drawbacks to Trader Joe’s is that they don’t carry many household items or random ingredients.
Our monthly grocery budget is $600 ($150 a week) – our second largest monthly expense, save for the years that we hit our insurance deductible! I know that many people get their grocery bill a LOT lower (and I admire you), but in my defense: there are three of us, we eat virtually all of our meals at home (or packed for work), I have a ‘special needs’ diet (i.e. gluten-free), we believe in eating mainly plants and less processed food, and we try to buy many things organic. Also, my husband eats an incredible amount of food (truly – incredible). I don’t have hard-and-fast organic rules anymore, although I do loosely stick to the Dirty Dozen philosophy. My attitude about organic has really evolved to a “when available and when not financially ridiculous.â€Â Oh, and our budget includes stuff like household cleaning products and shampoo.
So – my goal with budgeting for groceries is stay within that $600. Some months, it’s challenging. Other months, it’s a piece of cake. One nice side effect of budgeting is that I’m really starting to understand how much a few bucks makes added up over time. Spending $575 over the month instead of $600 doesn’t feel like a big deal at time. But if you do that every single month, it’s an extra $300 in your pocket.
I was pumped to see if Aldi could beat Trader Joe’s prices, as I really think of TJ’s as a great deal (interestingly enough, the same company owns both chains!). I *knew* that Aldi would crush Harris Teeter prices because they are out of control.
Verdict? SO MUCH SAVED.
(Prices and total won’t neatly add up because we bought multiples of some things, plus tax – but you get the gist.)
I spent yesterday bouncing between stores to figure out who really priced things out the best.  On certain items, Aldi was much cheaper than Trader Joe’s – seriously, I was shocked at some of the prices (for example, asparagus was $2 cheaper at Aldi). But on other foods, Trader Joe’s won out (almond milk was about $0.75 cheaper at Trader Joe’s).
$0.99 spices!
Very inexpensive peanut butter.
Aldi’s Fit & Active line caught my attention. Unlike Trader Joe’s, which has pretty strict rules about food ingredients, Aldi is more like a regular grocery store in that anything goes. Fine by me – I just have to remember to read more labels. The Fit & Active salad dressing had a much ‘cleaner’ ingredient list than the regular salad dressing (also – CHEAP!).
The Simple Nature line offered organic goodies.
HOLY CHEAP DIAPERS. I buy a 180 count box of Pampers on Amazon for $46.49 – these are almost $0.10 cheaper per diaper. I wonder how well they work?! Anyone know?
Oh, and many people posted on Meghann’s blog that they didn’t like Aldi’s produce section, so I wasn’t expecting much. But I have to say that I was actually impressed.
All of the fruit and veggies looked fresh and delicious, and the prices were spot on, too. There were many organic options as well. I bought organic cherry tomatoes, organic bananas, and organic spinach.
In conclusion, here is what Aldi is:
Cheap
A grocery store with several notable private lines, including foods aimed at the organic, gluten-free, and health-conscious shopper
No frills shopping
Great for basics
And based on my initial impressions, here is what Aldi is NOT:
A one-stop shop
Like Trader Joe’s, you can’t do all of your shopping at Aldi all of the time. There’s always going to be a need to go to a larger grocery store (you know, with 30,000+ items!) to buy that unsweetened coconut flakes you *really* need for a special recipe.  And actually, I can’t even do all of my ‘basics’ shopping at Aldi because the store that I went to didn’t carry things like tofu or gluten-free bread.
But I can’t get over how much we saved at Aldi in comparison to our regular grocery haul! We spent $80 on a light weekly haul when we probably would’ve spent $100 at Trader Joe’s and goodness-knows-how-much at Harris Teeters. A large part of it may be that Aldi is so ‘no frills,’ which extends to the food itself. There isn’t aisle after aisle of tempting processed and packaged treats and candies, like there is at Trader Joe’s. Which may be a good things or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it!
Side note – I loved that Aldi doesn’t offer bags so you’re forced to bring your own (you also bag your own groceries to save the employees time and thus keep prices low). I always forgot my bags, so it was nice to have extra motivation to bring them.
(My chevron scarf is from Stitch Fix, my latest obsession {it’s a personalized styling service that is truly amazing and spot-on in terms of style and sizing}. My latest budgeting goal is to save more money on groceries so I can buy more cute scarves – hah.)
Do you shop at multiple grocery stores to get the best prices? And – what is your monthly grocery budget? I typically shop at two stores, but it’s more for convenience/availability than pricing. Multiple stores for one trip is an idea that I’m just warming up to, but I’m definitely starting to see the benefits of. Like I said, if you can save just a few dollars every week, it really adds up.
This post was sponsored by Aldi, but as always, all opinions are my own!
Hihi, i´m from germany (where aldi was founded) and its funny to see that the shops look exactly like ours here. Here in germany aldi has not such a good image, because its so cheap und the shops are ugly.
greetings from Nina (who is dreaming about a grocery stores like trades joes or whole foods in germany…)
: )