"Aldi Store Manager response"

A review of Aldi by John written on Sunday 13th of November 2011

I am a Store Manager with Aldi. I've read through many of the reviews on here and would like to address some of the popular complaints and comments.

As some people have pointed out, Aldi aim to provide excellent value high quality products. We achieve this by keeping our costs down. Remember that customers are our sole source of income and so our costs are actually YOUR costs. If our costs are low so are your prices.

When you buy a product from any store you are paying for not only the cost of the product but the following; land the store is built on, the construction costs of the store, rent and rates, heat and light, insurance, the replacement of stolen shopping trollies, warehousing at our regional distribution centres, transport and of course the biggest expense - staff wages. I'm sure that list is not exaustive but you need to understand all the costs that YOU the customer have to pay for if you are to understand why we do things a certain way.

Carparks - Because the sites we occupy are small compared to say a Tesco, we need cars to turnover frequently so that when customers arrive they have a place to park. We believe in free parking for customers and so our carparks would be abused by non-customers if we don't manage them. Not all carparks are restricted. Those that are are usually 90 minutes and some in more urban areas will be 60 mins. The vast majority of customers find these times sufficient. Disabled customers should present their blue badge to the manager and will have their future stay allowance doubled. If you want to be able to shop elsewhere before/after Aldi and leave your car then sorry - that is not what you pay for. Put simply, larger more generous parking arrangements mean higher costs for us and in turn YOU.

Telephones - Stores do not publish phone numbers and head office telephone service is limited. Do you want to pay for a call centre and staff to answer your calls about whether we have brocolli in stock?? Thought not. The majority of queries can be handled by the Store Manager so go and see them next time you're in store.

Baskets - There are 2 reasons we don't have baskets. People stealing them is the secondary reason. Primarily it is because our extremely efficient checkout system requires a trolley. Customers using a trolley can be processed much faster meaning fewer cashiers, fewer tills and lower costs for YOU.

Checkout queues - Don't concern yourself with how many tills are open or how many people are in front of you. Look at your watch when you join the queue and then again once you walk away from the other end. Do the same in Tesco etc and you will often find you are served quicker at Aldi. We only have the tills open that we need and gladly open additional tills as demand dictates. If you want to pay for 20 cashiers to beep extremely slowly during busy times and to sit and chat when there are no cutomers, other retailers offer that. Our staff are always expected to be doing something productive. Of course you will be expected to pack away from the tills in your own time, but that is because you pay for every second a cashier spends on you through pricing.

I hope this gives you an insight into how a successful discount retailer works.

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