Here we begin the discussion of those Outlet Grocery Store shopping categories known as The Discount Grocery Store, the Limited Assortment or Value Grocery.
Aldi’s
50 Westminster Drive
6445 Grayson Road
1302 Lititz Pike
Lancaster, PA 17601
105 N. 11th Ave
280 Northern Way
York, PA 17402
And 61 more in PA alone! The Germans have come to Mooville in a big way.
Aldi’s is the first among them all.
This German-owned bunch are exhibit A in How They Won the War… E-FISH-EN-CEE. I’m talking low-cost grocery world-freaking domination. Not yet in South America, Africa or Asia, the Germans are EVERYWHERE else and they are all the same, every last one: clean, well-lit, lots of aisle space, 1300 items not 30,000, pay a quarter to get a cart but get the quarter back when you slide your cart back into the queue and bag your own groceries in your own bags. Hey, these guys invented "Arbeit macht frei," remember?
900 stores in the US means there’s one close to you and Mooville has a whole batch of ‘em… the one they just opened on the West Shore next to that other behemoth of weird stuff that’s pretty cheap all the time Big Lots is as lock-step sterile and cookie-cutter organized as any of them. And while it does have the personality of a cardboard box, they have not quite figured out their inventory par levels yet: I found the 1 lb. bags of every day 99 cent chopped lettuce (Easily $1.99 at The Giant) for TEN CENTS A BAG!!! I ate salad every day for a week!
Go there before they tweak the traffic counts and start ordering closer to the edge.
Set your watch by:
5# of sugar – 99 cents [Ed. note - As of 8/20/2008 this is bumped up to $1.19]
5# of flour – 99 cents [Ed. note - This, too...]
1 dozen large eggs – 99 cents [Ed. note - Ditto]
The $2.99 bouquets of fresh flowers as you walk in the door are a nice touch of the natural world in a box of straight lines and enforced calm that is pretty much the atmosphere here... but they don’t hold up that well, considering.
If you want the freshest flowers really cheap AND performance art... you have to go see Mike the Flower Guy at Third and Market Sts. in
Next time: The Discount Grocery Also-rans...
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