All posts in the topic Aldi's Grand Opening (Short link)
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- There are 10 posts — by 10 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Nicole Waxmonsky-Tu at Jan 30 05:11 UTC
From Erik Hansen, CPED -- "With a delay resolved for the business licenses for
the new Northside Aldi grocery store, the City along with the developer
Wellington Management, Inc and the new and existing tenants of Penn Lowry
Crossings will hold a Grand Opening celebration on Saturday, January 26th at 1
p.m. We will have food, a heated tent, and a program at 1:30. Providing
entertainment will be the Henry High School marching band. Please pass this
along to those who are interested and I hope to see you there to celebrate the
accomplishment of this important community work of more than 10 years!"
Hooray for North Minneapolis! Hooray for Aldi's! As a single person, shopping
at big box can be daunting so I'm glad for the Aldi alternative. I've found
their products to be of good quality and especially good value.
Thanks to Council President Barb Johnson for the effort she put into making
this project happen and to everyone in the City and County for working with
existing businesses to keep the anchors at that corner ... You just can't get
better service than at North End Hardware!
Peace in the 'hood,
Connie Beckers
Folwell
Connie writes:
Hooray for North Minneapolis! Hooray for Aldi's! As a single person, shopping
at big box can be daunting so I'm glad for the Aldi alternative. I've found
their products to be of good quality and especially good value.
Me:
I find myself strangely attracted to Aldi's. It is a great place for basic
staples - I buy cases of kidney beans there. The biggest bummer is the
percentage of processed foods is higher than in a traditional supermarket - my
heart sags (hopefully not literally) for America's health walking in there --
but they are not alone in this, and are certainly better than a corner store.
I always love reminding people that the parent company of Aldi's also owns
Trader Joes! Down-market generics, up-market generics - sometimes you wonder if
it's same stuff, different can.
On 1/16/08 David Brauer wrote: >Connie writes: > >Hooray for North Minneapolis! Hooray for Aldi's! As a >single person, shopping at big box can be daunting so I'm >glad for the Aldi alternative. I've found their products >to be of good quality and especially good value. > >Me: > >I find myself strangely attracted to Aldi's. It is a great >place for basic staples - I buy cases of kidney beans >there. The biggest bummer is the percentage of processed >foods is higher than in a traditional supermarket - my >heart sags (hopefully not literally) for America's health >walking in there -- but they are not alone in this, and >are certainly better than a corner store. > >I always love reminding people that the parent company of >Aldi's also owns Trader Joes! Down-market generics, >up-market generics - sometimes you wonder if it's same >stuff, different can. If the Wiki article is correct (and I think it is) they're two diferent animals, but with similar markings: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi> Here's a relevant quote: In the USA, Aldi Nord CEO Theo Albrecht started a family trust that owns the Trader Joe's chain of specialty grocery stores, which is separate from both Aldi corporations. It is not Theo but his brother Karl Albrecht's Aldi South that conducts Aldi's operations in the USA. I first went to Aldi as a teen visiting Germany. I had never seen anything like it. Paying for bags? whattheheck?! Opened shipping boxes? Crazy. Changed the way I look at food marketing and roots of consumer waste.
Connie writes: Hooray for North Minneapolis! Hooray for Aldi's! As a single person, shopping at big box can be daunting so I'm glad for the Aldi alternative. I've found their products to be of good quality and especially good value. Hooray? For another non-union, foreign-owned competitor undercutting our own local grocery stores? (SuperValu, CUB, Rainbow are all at least partially unionized workers.) Hooray for the Wal-Mart or the grocery business? Aldi's exceptional profits come at the expense of the employees, who are part-time, contract labor (thus reduced benefits). The company is notoriously anti-union, getting rid of any workers who try to join one. And the secretive, billionaire brothers who own Aldi's are real-life conterparts to Mr. Burns of the Simpsons. I suppose Aldi's food is "good value" for the money. I understand you can also find good value in sneakers made by Asian child labor, or good value in items made by Chinese prison labor. But thinking about that would make me choke while eating their food. See http://www.greenleft.org.au/2004/584/32414 for more details.
On Jan 17, 2008, at 12:36 AM, Tim Bonham wrote:
>
> Hooray? For another non-union, foreign-owned competitor
> undercutting our own local grocery stores? (SuperValu, CUB,
> Rainbow are all at least partially unionized workers.)
>
> Hooray for the Wal-Mart or the grocery business?
>
> Aldi's exceptional profits come at the expense of the employees,
> who are part-time, contract labor (thus reduced benefits). The
> company is notoriously anti-union, getting rid of any workers who
> try to join one. And the secretive, billionaire brothers who own
> Aldi's are real-life conterparts to Mr. Burns of the Simpsons.
Thank you Tim! The irony of an Aldi's on Franklin Avenue where the
inner city residents can find "reasonable access to shopping" for
food and other necessities is appalling. It's not much - or does seem
like much - in this modern, union-busting era. I don't consider
myself a Wal-Mart zombie. However add in Target and Whole Foods to
Aldi and the non-union presence creates a bigger pinch for workers
and consumers. We just don't seem to get the math on this.
snip from Strib 7/25/2003:
Closely-held Aldi, founded in Germany some 40 years ago, is owned by
brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht, considered Europe's richest men with
a fortune worth an estimated $41.3 billion. There are about 5,000
Aldi stores in more than a dozen countries, including 685 corporate-
owned units in the United States.
Laura
Southeast/Como
Laura Waterman Wittstock
President and CEO
Wittstock & Associates
913 19th Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-387-4915
www.laurawatermanwittstock.com
SuperValu bailed out of north Minneapolis years ago, as did Kowalski's AND
Target. I hope you're not insinuating that Kowalski's and Target pay union
wages? Target is a notorious part-time employer offering little if any benefits
and Kowalski's claimed they "couldn't make it" on the north side. Hard to
believe considering the audacious markup on their items at their stores on
Grand Avenue and elsewhere.
North Minneapolis didn't have a grocery store for decades - I just hope Aldi's
sticks around for awhile.
Jill Laxen
Cleveland
only a wagon-ride away from Aldi's on Penn & Lowry this summer....
The Super Valu chain (GJ's) that was up here sold out city wide to Kowalski's.
Kowalski's did bail but they were and still should be part of the UFCW "Meat
Cutters" union as are Cub and Lunds. Even with Aldi's we still do not have
enought Grocery stores. Kowalski's left around 2005 far from decades with out
a grocery store.
Kowalski's is union, as are Cub, Rainbow, Lund's, Byerly's, Super Valu, County
Market, plus some independents. The employees that have enough seniority to
work full time or close to full time get paid a living wage, get paid vacation,
contributions to a pension fund, and FREE health insurance. Part time
employees get part time benefits. Teamster's local 653 is the grocery union on
the Minneapolis side of the Twin Cities. The union does an excellent job for
their members. They also educate their members on what it takes to be a good
employee. It is very rare for the monthly union newsletter to not have an
article regarding proper behavior on the part of an employee working in the
grocery industry.
Local store owners have many of the most productive employees in the grocery
business, thanks to the living wages and benefits secured by the union.
My mother has been collecting her local 653 pension for almost 28 years (after
27 years as a part time & full time check out person).
When I shop for groceries in North Minneapolis, I will continue to shop at
Jerry's Cub at Broadway & Lyndale. I know the employees are being treated
properly and the money stays local. And, I have a wonderful selection of
healthy products (and unhealthy, if I so choose) at great prices.
Neil Carlson
Loring
I often shop at Aldi because I live on the edge financially and often can't
afford to shop anywhere else, even though when I do have the money, I shop at
Cub, Rainbow, Target, and even occasionally Trader Joe's. Considering the sheer
amount of poverty on the North Side, I think the new Aldi there is a good thing
from the customer's point of view. As to the high percentage of processed foods
sold there, that probably has a lot to do with keeping costs down. Spoilage of
fresh foods is a major money drain for a grocery store, unfortunately. At least
the selection is probably healthier than that at a SuperAmerica or one of those
rip-off mini-markets.
I do feel bad about the anti-union attitude of Aldi, but as I understand
it, staff are well-paid even though they're required to work harder and faster
than most grocery workers (understaffing is part of how they keep prices down,
so is their limited schedule of store hours). However, being "politically
correct" about one's shopping choices often requires having the discretionary
income to do so. Poor people know damn well Wal*Mart is oppressive, for
example, but going without warm clothing in winter (as one example) is just too
high a price to pay to be "moral". I support unions but not at the price of
going without basic needs. If my income was $25K instead of $12K that would be
different....
As to paying for bags and using opened shipping boxes to take food home,
Cub and Country Store (which later became Kowalski's and still later went
upscale) had the same policies when they first started in the late 1970s. They
charged 3 cents for a paper bag, and would rubber stamp it with their logo when
you paid for it so you could return and reuse it to save that 3 cents next
time. If you didn't want to buy bags, you were free to use the old shipping
boxes that would have been tossed anyway. The only thing really new about Aldi
is the mostly generic selection and the 25 cent deposit on carts.
Does anyone have a good reference to numbers allotted for groceries per week or
per month? I've found the numbers for what constitutes 'poverty status' but I
would have no idea how to count out housing or utilities.
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