Julia Erickson ☮️

A woman spent about $280 a week on groceries at a big supermarket for her family of five. She’d heard Aldi was cheaper, so one Saturday she finally tried it. She walked up to the carts and couldn’t get one loose they were chained together. Inside, the store was half the size she was used to. Products were sitting in their cardboard shipping boxes. She didn’t recognize most of the brands. At checkout, the cashier scanned everything so fast she couldn’t keep up, there were no free bags, and she had to pack her groceries at a counter by herself. She almost didn’t go back. Then she looked at her receipt. Nearly the same groceries. $171. She told the story to her neighbor a former Aldi store manager who spent 10 years running stores, training staff, and explaining the “weird” Aldi rules to confused first-time shoppers. The neighbor laughed. “Everything that felt strange to you is exactly why your receipt was $109 cheaper. The quarter for the cart saves Aldi from paying someone to collect carts. No free bags saves money. Products in shipping boxes save stocking time. A small store with fewer products means lower rent and less waste. The fast cashier is a whole system designed to keep labor costs low. You didn’t shop at a weird grocery store. You shopped at a store that removed every cost you don’t care about and passed the savings to you.” She walked her through 10 things over coffee. The woman now saves around $100 a week more than $5,000 a year. She said: “I thought Aldi was cheap because the food was worse. It’s cheap because the store is built differently.” Here are the 10 things her neighbor told her and how to get the most out of Aldi:🧵

Set up one thing with family tonight: a code word only you share. If someone calls in a panic sounding like you and asking for money, they ask for the word first. A cloned voice can sound real, but it won't know the word.