On: Monopolies across the grocery supply chain squeeze...

[chasil]

Has this penetrated Aldi's, which uses in-house brands for the majority of their products?

Is Aldi's a good way to avoid these monopolies?

From the article, does Aldi's avoid?:

- Late delivery fees from vendors (or is it better than Walmart?)

- Slotting Fees

- Sundry wholesaler and retailer fees

- Price dependence on Tyson and other abusive suppliers

[bilsbie → chasil]

I recently discovered this store. Literally seems to be half the price of my local grocery store and even more important I’m not overwhelmed with choices.

[njovin → chasil]

I don't know about Aldi's but Trader Joe's (which also uses a lot of in-house brands) seems to suffer from this but to a lesser extent and with some lag compared to the competition.

This is all anecdotal, but when egg prices went crazy it was several months before TJ's prices crept up (and even still they are reliably lower than major competitors). Same with meat products - for several months they're house-branded stuff was quite a bit cheaper than Vons/Albertons/Ralphs but they've slowly crept up and are now basically on-par.

[ska → njovin]

Doesn’t one of the Aldis own trader joes?

[chasil → ska]

As I remember, German Aldi's split into Aldi Nord/North and Aldi Sud/South between the two brothers that owned the firm, over a conflict on cigarette sales.

If I am correct, U.S. Aldi's is owned by Aldi North; Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi South.

"The business was split into two separate groups in 1960, that later became Aldi Nord, headquartered in Essen, and Aldi Süd, headquartered in Mülheim...

"Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Belgium, Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal and Spain, while Aldi Süd operates in Australia, Austria, China, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States...

"Aldi Nord also owns the Trader Joe's grocery chain in the United States which operates separately from the group."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi

EDIT: In the U.S., Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe's, and Aldi Sud owns the eponymous grocery chain.

[ska → chasil]

Thanks for chasing down the details! I knew about the split and vaguely remembered that one of them had bought Trader Joe's a while ago.

[throwawaysleep → chasil]

Given that people in this thread are angry at vertical integration, I would bet that Aldi would be the first hit by many laws.

[sithadmin → throwawaysleep]

Would depend on what exactly 'vertical integration' is defined as. Most grocers' house brand items are produced by 'white label'/contract manufacturers that supply many different grocers. It's cutting one or at best two steps from the supply chain instead of true vertical integration.

HEB (the major player in the Texas market) is a notable exception that has true vertical integration, with in-house manufacturing and packaging facilities producing house brands, and its own direct relationship with raw goods/farm suppliers.