Budget Shangri-La: How discount chain Aldi is giving those fancy grocery stores a run for their money
For years, Amber Walker held a dim view of Aldi, the discount grocer whose U.S. headquarters sit just a mile from her home in Batavia, Ill.
She associated it with dented 10-cent cans and no-name brands. She did not understand why, of all things, it also sold hammocks.
But Walker's negative perception swiftly changed after her first visit to Aldi in decades in 2016, when the chain started accepting credit cards, and she found not the dingy floors from her childhood memories but a budget Shangri-La.
She could buy a week's worth of groceries for her family of four for less than $100, and discover treasures in an aisle dedicated to random rotating items that "I don't need but can't live without." Aldi, at least in Walker's eyes, got even better when it broadened its limited selection to include more fresh, organic and high-end products - still at steep discounts - while undergoing an aggressive national expansion and chainwide remodeling blitz. Walker's store in Batavia, renovated in 2017, even got a bakery.
As a spruced-up Aldi climbs toward its goal of having 2,500 stores by 2022 - which would make it the third-largest grocer in the nation by store count - converts like Walker are
