For anyone who knows me, they’ll know i’m quite into my food. I love to cook and I love to taste different flavours – cooking fresh spicy Italian is probably my favourite and the one my kids will eat with me bowl for bowl.
A few years ago (well, maybe ten), I discovered the wonders of Chorizo – it’s like a super ingredient to add to pasta to take a simple tomato and pesto sauce and turn it into a deep paprika spiced bowl of loveliness.
When the Aldi opened near my Nottingham office, I sceptically wandered in to have a look and realised I could access lovely quality Spanish Chorizo at near Spanish prices. I bought it, I cooked with it and I was impressed.
But recently, they changed supplier, or at least changed recipe to hit a lower price point and it’s a pale (literally) shadow of its former self.
Now, it may seem a bit odd to get obsessive over Chorizo and how it relates to a big brand like Aldi, so it’s caused doubts. Where else have they started cutting corners?
If your offer is great quality at low prices that means you are working towards the principle of ‘how good can we make it for the money?’
if your offer changes to low prices, then the change in emphasis for the brand means the new mantra is ‘how cheaply can we get away with making it?’
So, if i’m right, then all their time spent recruiting new middle class shoppers has been wasted. They’ll all wander back to their normal suppliers and Aldi will be back as a low cost shop – ie a shop for low cost food and household things we’re not sure we need – and not the brilliant discount retailer it was becoming.
The Aldi stores in the states have discontinued the chorizo. Too bad, it was one of the best tasting store bought chorizos I’ve had and I’ve tried a bunch.
That’s terrible Bill. We should start a campaign online to bring it back!
All the best
John
I’ve also noticed a decline in quality at Aldi over the past 6 months or so. They recently changed a lot of their brands and the quality on all of the rebranded products is a step down from what they were previously selling. The quality declines that I noticed most were on their jumbo cinnamon rolls, their version of Oreos and vanilla sandwich creme cookies, bacon, and canned small peas (used to be called early June peas). I’ve also noticed that the prices at Aldi seem to creep up a little with each visit there. They are still lower than most other grocery stores, but between the decline in quality and the price increases, my reasons for going to Aldi are starting to disappear. I agree that their focus has moved from “great quality at low prices” back to “low prices”. I didn’t shop at Aldi for many years because of their reputation for poor quality. I started shopping there about 8 years ago when I heard about their new focus on selling better quality items while maintaining cost savings. I would hate to see them return to the crap quality of products they were selling in the past.
I’m glad i’m not the only one then! I think we have hit the bottom on prices, like we did in the 80’s and the fight back will be on quality.
But I suspect that the market will divide even further. There will be the Waitrose/small deli/local butcher set at the top and then the Asda/Iceland set at the bottom.