Aldi

This Aldi location is very convenient for me and the food selection is excellent. I’ve always had fresh produce, and my only complaint about the food is they very rarely carry kale. However, the cashiers are extremely unfriendly. When you greet them they rarely smile and ignore you and they seem to absolutely hate their job. I encourage the managers to provide some additional customer service training. For reference, Trader Joe’s excels at this.

Aldi has ruined other shopping experiences for me. Their cashiers are so freakin’ fast, I get pissed at other grocery or retail stores when they are not ringing me up with the same frantic urgency. This might be the biggest reason I love Aldi’s. They’re not messing around.
The prices at Aldi’s are great. If you’re looking for brand name, don’t come here. The brands are not ones you find often, but it’s quality, not crap. They can give you much better prices because they’ve cut costs elsewhere. Like making their associates more efficient in multi tasking so they don’t need to hire many. There aren’t any loose carts in the lot because you need to bring a quarter to get one, you get your quarter back when you return it, this frees up the associates from corralling them. No bags either. You bring your own, or buy theirs.
The location in Mahtomedi is always clean, they have an amazing selection of gourmet cheese, it changes often. The first time I came here I stocked up on goat cheese because I was afraid they only had it for a limited time. It’s $ 1.99 here, and $ 3.99 at Festival Foods down the street! Anyhow, the goat cheese wasn’t a limited time. I bought way too many logs.
The produce so far has been better than what I’ve seen at big retailers in terms of freshness. You don’t have a huge selection in fruits and veggies, but the essentials are here, and there are organic options. You also need to buy most items in packages, there’s no single purchase of much. You would buy a sack of potatoes, or a pack of zucchini, not a single item.
I can’t give them a five because I still need to visit Cub or Festival food for items they don’t have. In particular I really wish they had basil, there’s cilantro and green onions, but I feel like basil should be a must too. I’d also like to see maybe a couple fresh fish selections, like salmon and some sort of white fish. There are frozen bags, but fish it so much better fresh. However, I do like that they have random items from time to time at great deals, like the smoked salmon and prosciutto ham.
If you’re one of those uppity people that refuse to purchase food from anywhere but Whole Foods or Lunds, you’re an idiot, and deserve to keep wasting your money. If not, give Aldi’s a try. I use to get coupons at other retailers and get excited, until I realized that Aldi’s is always the sale prices compared to others, no more coupon clipping or me. The cart thing, and no bags, isn’t that bad when you get use to it. You also leave feeling great about how much you spent on your full cart.

Love me some Aldi.
Bring a quarter — you need it to get a cart… you’ll get your quarter back, but their deposit system keeps the parking lot free of stray carts and it is part of their overall strategy to save you money by saving their money — you dig?
Bring your own bags — they have bags, but you will pay a little extra unless you bring your own.
Great price on the basics — super inexpensive milk, great prices on most produce (the only time I have ever found better prices on a specific item was when WalMart was running a summer sale on Pineapples…), but I digress — I buy tons of avocados here because they are always priced very low.
Good frozen foods selection — prepared foods and frozen meats, etc.
Aldi can SEEM like a hassle if you don’t go in with the mindset that this isn’t Rainbow or Cub — Aldi is Aldi. If you bring a quarter, bring your own bags, don’t mind bagging your own groceries and you are prepared for the fact that you probably won’t find everything on your shopping list given the smaller size of an Aldi grocery store, then you will probably love it.

This is a great place to shop. The food is very cost effective. As long as you can deal with not always finding the name brands you may want, it is a good place to shop. I usually supplement my shopping with Aldi.
The staff here has always been pleasant and helpful when I visit.
Parking is usually not a problem and the location is easy to get to for shopping.
Shopping lines are shopping lines, know when the slower times to go and you should be fine.