Aldi Often Over Looked but Never Disappoints Dives into Delivery

Once again Aldi the fastest growing grocery chain that industry insiders, continue to discount elevates it game with delivery driving incremental customer relevance according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  Aldi’s new electricity is delivery.

Regular readers of this blog know that Aldi has close to 1,900 stores open in the United States and plans to build 600 more stores by 2022.  There is no doubt that that this ‘hard-discounter’ has disrupted the grocery store establishment with its unconventional private label, small footprint, fresh food format according to Johnson.

Now that Aldi is officially launching grocery delivery to 75 major markets across its entire 35-state footprint, including San Diego, New York, Miami, Minneapolis, and Raleigh, N.C., by Thanksgiving legacy food retailers will have to ‘up their game’ to compete.

Aldi has a new partnership with Instacart.  The service is launching after successful pilots in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and Chicago. Aldi customers in 5,000 ZIP codes in these markets will have access to such fresh groceries as organic produce, antibiotic-free meat and fresh seafood, all available for delivery within an hour.

Jason Hart, CEO of ALDI U.S stated "Aldi is a pioneer and a leader in creating a shopping experience that works with people's busy lives. Our partnership with Instacart and the expansion of our  ecommerce options are more ways we are meeting the growing needs of today's shopper, who wants high-quality food at unbeatable prices."

Shoppers can use the grocery ecommerce service by filling a virtual shopping cart at Instacart.com or through the Instacart app. Customers choose a delivery window – anywhere from one hour to one week later – and let Instacart's personal shoppers build and deliver the order.

Aldi began piloting delivery in the Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles areas last August. Following the "overwhelmingly positive" response to those pilots, Aldi and Instacart expanded with an additional pilot in the Chicago area.

So, just what is your brands new electricity? According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new food products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.”  That is why this is such a great partnership according to the Grocerant Guru®.

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, developing brands, unique urban clothing, grocerant positioning, Fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand held marketing.

Foodservice retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different.  That will require brands to embrace new fresh food partnerships more now than ever before according to Johnson.

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.