Bring on the Germans. Now!

The ALDI stores popping up around town are impressive. No wonder the Euro is kicking our greenback's butt if this is an indication of how much better they can run a "low end" grocery store compared to American companies. We Intowners need to quickly implant into the right people's heads that downtown Birmingham would be an ideal spot for one of their stores.

Why such a glowing words, you ask? If my reading of the people I'm often around is correct I'm out of step with many of you reading this in my grocery shopping. Ninety to 95% of the time I shop at Wally World or Piggly Wiggly not the food coutour haven these days, Publix. It saves me a lot of money and is overall not a bad shopping experience except that that I know I'm feeding the BeAsT itself, supporting its regressive employment practices and the questionable product sourcing practices. For now, however, I can't ignore those low, low prices and continue to put money into the coffers of the world's largest corporation. Shopping at Piggly Wiggly is a way to assuage my guilt and keep a few dollars local, but the difference in prices is great and thus far I haven't been able to verify that they pay their employees any better than Wal-Mart (WallyW). Enter the Germans with a solution to my conundrum: ALDI.


ALDI's got a nice selection of different brands than I can find anywhere else and they have them at really good prices. Yesterday I bought a bottle Shiraz wine for $3.50 and there were these frozen chicken asiago hot pockets that have a complexity of taste that remind me of a good restaurant that were about $2.00 a box! Add to that that they start new employees at $10 to $13 an hour! (You can work at WallyW for years in store management and not hit $10/hour, I'm told by a former manager.) Add to that they have a very active (almost to a fault) program for encouraging recycling, one of my hot buttons. Add to that ALDI stores all have a small size that can fit into a lot of different areas. Which is why they need to be downtown. In upcoming weeks I'm going to look into how we can let the good folk at ALDI know that downtown Birmingham would be a great place to reach Intowners. What do you guys think?