Aldi

Home away from home. Having grown up in Germany I m all too familiar with Aldi’s concept and approach to being a grocery store. Yes you may not have 15 different brands of toothpaste, but what they carry is generally of good quality and a fair price. Solid meat section. Good fruit and veggies. And awesome random items that rotate each week. Not the best cold cuts but there are other places for that.
This specific store is great because its not as overrun as the other locations I ve been to in BNE.

Aldi stores are no surprise to anyone these days; we’ve all done the obligatory discovery visit, and yet for some reason I keep going back. I think it’s a blue moon thing.
This Aldi is one of the newer ones, sitting on the corner of Kelvin Grove Rd & Bishop St, near the surfing manikin on Kelvin Grove Rd, if you know what I’m talking about. There is undercover and outside parking, but be prepared to walk up steps or up the lengthy ramp to get to the store.
Ambience **
While still relatively new and shiny, upon stepping in, I already got the feeling this place won’t be around for long. With a Woolworths and Coles within stone-​throwing distance, and in an isolated spot not crowded by eateries or entertainment offerings, I feel like Aldi’s generic advertising is not going to help this one stay afloat. While it looks like everything is so perfectly Ikea-​packed, I miss things. Price labels are stuck above items instead of below, and my supermarket education for the third (ok, fifth) time gets an overhaul. Besides what we’ve come to expect in the way of stacked groceries and strange branding, at the perfect moment every afternoon, the sun set pierces through the a wall to wall window to blaze your eyeballs. Since some of us would consider this natural lighting good for the environment, I’ll just add — the sun hits the furthest wall where all the chilled goods (raw & preserved meats, cheeses, dips, milk) are stored. Still safe? For sure, but as if you’re not going to doubt it when it hits you.
Service ****
Now that I’m not as noob to Aldi, I know what to do. In fact I spent the better part of today thinking about the cashier confrontation I was going to be facing this afternoon. They always scan and stack WAY too fast for anyone to be able to keep up with, then you’re facing the repack over at the bench of shame. The trick is to make sure the person you line up behind has a LOT of items, or at least more than you. Calculate that in the time it takes you to stack all your items on what you once thought were the novelty oversized conveyor belt they’ll be finishing up. Grab the bags, open four of them in your trolley and you’re ready to take on the check-​out fill-​up. Stress attack avoided, you got your stuff in the trolley, and you can pay at the same time.
Now that I’m feeling proud of myself, on reflection, I think my cashier was being kinder than what I’ve experienced before. She was definitely much more smiley and friendly than I’ve experienced at Aldi before.
Products on offer ***
One of everything. That’s… pretty much it. It’s fine when you’re on a budget to be paying less, and for those who regularly visit and know where what they want is. For those of us who want to um and ah over a range of 50 types and brands of toothpaste, stick to your mainstream supermarket.
The meat, fruit and veg are ok — in fact, the fruit, upon reflection of the plums, cherries, and after nomming down a whole punnet of blueberries is better; it looked much riper. The meat on the other hand; fifty-​fifty. The prices were lower, I paid $ 5 for 400gm of ham in 100gm portions, whereas you’d pay $ 3 per 100gm at Woolies, but the quality of the raw meat looked a bit less than average.
Overall
I probably will go back again. In six months. Because I’ll always hope one day I could finish a whole supermarket shop at Aldi without having to make a trip back to Coles or Woolies.