Aldi and cost strategy

When you go shopping to Aldi you will not find too much variety, you will not find a fancy place and you will not find a relaxed atmosphere. You will find fairly good products at very good prices.

Aldi has a cost saving strategy that is reflected on aspects such as the products being displayed on the pallets (they use the floor as part of the warehousing), and the staff being cross trained in order to work on the tills, clean or bring out more pallets with products. Other interesting activities are the fact that you need a pound to use the trolley and then you get it back when you put the trolley back where you found it, the incredible speed of the tills (which means that you put all your stuff in the trolley and then pack them in a big table behind the tills) and the charge for plastic bags (even though this is a more common practice by other supermarkets as well).

I imagine Aldi is able to negotiate good prices with its suppliers by buying big volumes for all its stores in Europe. This, and the fact that the operational costs must be very low, enables Aldi to have such cheap prices.

I guess I'm happy by saving money and getting out of the place as soon as possible, but probably is not a shopping experience that will suit everyone, but is the cost saving shopping experience.