Aldi: Green and Cheap, but My Husband Hates It

You’re expected to bag or box up your own groceries. And getting your quarter back for the shopping cart can be fiddly. Also, the limited selection means you can’t find everything you need, so Julie ducks into the fancy supermarket for paper goods and peanut butter. “They just missed the mark on peanut butter,” she says of the Aldi house brand.

The more she told me about Aldi, the more I was itching to go. Finally, I talk my husband, Jason, into driving me over one day so he can pick out the food he wants. Big mistake. Where Julie and I see bargains and business practices as green as a golf course, Jason sees cheap store brands he is sure will make him gag.

He has a negative attitude from the second we walk in. He views supermarkets in lower income neighborhoods as businesses that prey on the poor, charging high prices for rotten produce. I know those stores exist. But Aldi is one of the good guys, I insist. He will hear none of it. He wants to get out as soon as possible. He is unimpressed when I show him the large bag of cashews for $2.99 and an even larger bag of frozen strawberries for $3.99.

When I tell Julie this, she nods. She has encountered such snobbery. She once sent her friend and her friend's teenage daughter over, and the daughter was mortified, refusing to have anything to do with vegetable soup that only costs 39¢.

“You mostly see women shopping at Aldi,” Julie says. “Meanwhile, the husbands, the friends, all these other people would die if they knew they were eating Aldi food. But after a while they come to realize it’s good food.”

Anthony and Katie have no complaints. “Brand names are for suckers,” Anthony says.

Their New Jersey Aldi is better stocked than mine in Atlanta, because it has been around longer and learned its shoppers’ habits. Many shoppers are there because they truly can’t afford pricier stores. “For us, when we go into Aldi you see how different people live,” Julie says. “You will go to checkout and see people have to put an item or two back because they don’t have enough money. They don’t have a debit card.”

She said she spends less because she is paying cash instead of using her credit card.

I don’t want to shop at Aldi every week. I like organic produce and biodegradable cleaning products, and I steer clear of anything with high fructose corn syrup. So I drop a significant sum at my local independent health food store. Still, I would like to buy staples at Aldi such as flour, sugar, nuts, orange juice concentrate, and whatever else I can find that suits our eating habits.

I like the store’s mission. And I can’t stand the thought of Julie getting all those bargains while I get price-gouged at another store. So I plan to shop Aldi again soon. This time, I’ll leave Jason at home.