Strange Aldi Remodel

[ClownLoach]

I'm not sure how widespread this program is, so I'm putting it in national.

Last Sunday I visited my roughly 2 year old Aldi and everything was normal. I went again Friday and they had remodeled the entire store in that short amount of time. I use the phrase remodel because electrical work was done and fixtures mostly replaced even on the perimeter. Very strange to see the changes.

First, they have removed all the end caps store wide except for the 4 at the back of the store. All the others on the seemingly new longer gondolas are blank panels with poster holders and ads about how great Aldi is. This makes absolutely no sense to me.

Second, they constructed a completely new wine department that is a gondola after the produce island. Before the liquor was facing the staffed checkstand by frozen, now it is much less visible and appears to be greatly reduced. Lighting was installed just for this gondola.

Third, they've maintained the split aisles but the "split" up the middle is so narrow you can only get a couple of carts through. This is a really poor decision and they probably only left this open as it served as a shortcut for freight stocking since that "split" is perpendicular to the warehouse door.

Fourth, they have moved all the "Aldi Buys" weird seasonal junk to one of the now longer back aisles and this includes all the limited time foods that are not refrigerated or frozen. Before they were interspersed through the regular sections, such as the Octoberfest soups above the regular ones. I'm not sure how this will improve sales because now to find the special stuff you must go to that one junky aisle.

Fifth, meat is expanded although for now it's lots of facings of the same items. I'm not sure why they need 30 facings of ground beef when they only carry four SKUs but I'm assuming they will be expanding the meats.

Every single item in the store except refrigerated and produce moved. The produce refrigerated wall is reduced at the expense of ready to heat meals like pizza, and bread is expanded. Some good changes include moving the tortillas to the bread wall where they probably will get better date rotation and old ones won't get lost. They seemed to have greatly reduced the baking where most Aldis have a full pallet of white sugar, full pallet of flour, etc. And now it looks like the entire section is only about 8 ft wide and it's in the former "up front" seasonal space. I think Hispanic foods was also greatly reduced.

It felt like they had expanded what I call the junk aisle in this remodel.

And last they removed another staffed checkout stand to add two more self checkout units. This means there really is only one staffed checkout stand as the other side of it serves as more of a front desk for the store.

There are a lot of empty holes in the store so I'm not sure how it will look once it's fully stocked. Looked like they could fit out an entire trailer. Odd to see this large of a remodel although I'm impressed they did it so quickly.