Aldi.. What The Hell is Going On???

If you are like me, you ditched Woolies and Coles many, many years ago, when Aldi came to Australia… It felt like a good change.. The quality was ok, the variety was ok, and the prices were unbelievable (cheap)!

Today I got a bit concern after watching a nice lady abusing the checkout lady by shouting at her “you and your company are thief! How can you charge this much difference from last week?”, followed by ” you can keep your shit, I’m out of here!”…

This lady was not a “red neck” or a Karen, far from it… Just a mother with two young kids, all well dressed, wearing proper shoes… No, I’m telling you, this lady just had enough and simply snapped under pressure.. Then she started to cry while picking up her kids and walking towards the exit…

What was that all about?? Then it was my turn at the check out and all I can say is wow. What the hell did just happened?? My shopping just went from the average $140 to $220 for virtually the same stuff I buy every fortnight… I quickly realised two things right there and then..

First one was that that lady was right.. And the second one was that I hadn’t bother to check the price for a while, because I thought that Aldi has the same low prices all the time… How wrong I was!

Aldi was founded in 1946 by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht and first served as a post-World War 2 discount store in Essen, Germany (via CNBC). The no-frills shopping experience they started back then still resonates with people today, but when the news broke that Aldi prices were rising in the country where it was founded, other nations began to worry. This week, the notoriously affordable products at Aldi saw a 20% to 50% price increase in its German stores, with up to 400 products at risk of being impacted by inflation (via news.com.au). According to The Limited Times, Aldi has said that the rising costs of “wheat, energy, and animal feed” due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are to blame.

Apparently that 25 to 50% price increase is NOT just in Germany…

The situation in Germany has other countries like Australia concerned about rising prices, but an Aldi Australia spokesperson explained that they are in a unique situation. “Every aspect of Aldi in Australia was built to withstand inflationary pressure, from our smaller format stores to our carefully curated private label range of groceries,” the spokesperson told news.com.au. There was no mention of how the U.S. will fare, but it’s possible that the same price increases in Germany may be seen worldwide (excluding Australia).

Well it is obvious now that the Aldi spokeperson has no clue about what’s happening in their stores…

A quick receipt check did confirm the painful truth. Beside few items (very few) prices has skyrocket around the 25%…

Coffee pods from $12.99 to $16.99 (30% increase), Pizza base 3pk from $6.00 to $7.29 (21.5% increase), just to name few…

And here is the real problem: I didn’t mind to put up with the inferior quality, unknown brands, the mess at the checkout and the constant lack or missing products on the shelve, because the price was right, but now??? Why would you go to shop at Aldi? They got nothing left going for them.. They just changed from “good different” to “bad different”

Then we got to deal with the fuel prices. Again “they” (not sure who they are) are blaming the invasion of Ukraine for the price of fuels at the bowser..

Bottom line is our Dollar has nearly halve in value within the past two months… Now the question is: What’s going to happen around Christmas when normally the prices tend to go up? $500 dollars for a weekly shopping? $300 to fill up the tank?

It is a known fact, that during a recession, people tend to lose weight. So perhaps there is a bright side to all this mess…