Aldi won’t celebrate its grand opening until Thursday, but customers got to kick the tires of Sanford’s newest grocery store today.
The Rant checked out the new digs today, prepping for a future hurricane with milk, bread, eggs and beer. Our thoughts?
If you like Lidl — which the consensus at Rant headquarters is we do, very much — then you’ll like Aldi. The new location on South Horner Boulevard in Sanford (next to Starbucks and Lowe’s Home Improvement) is roughly half the size of the new Lidl (we’re eye-balling here), but deceptively large on the inside. Like Lidl, Aldi carries inexpensive store brands of many different items like cereal, pasta and olives and a name-brand item here or there just to make it interesting.
Also like Lidl, the stuff’s pretty inexpensive. Milk at Aldi was $2.29. A dozen eggs were 59 cents.
The big difference? Smaller, for one, but that doesn’t mean it lacked for items. It appeared Aldi offered more in meat and poultry, while maybe less in bakery items and the odds and ends Lidl offers (like clothing and holiday items).
The other oddity, if you’ve never shopped at an Aldi, is you must have a quarter handy to use their carts. You get your quarter back if you return the cart. It’s … strange?
The grand opening is tomorrow. The first 100 customers will get golden tickets worth various amounts and will have a chance to win free produce for a year.
Here’s some photos. Happy shopping.
The reason they charge a quarter for the cart is so the cart will be returned to the store (not left in the parking lot) thereby eliminating having to pay an employee to collect the cart.