I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with
But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy
Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy
Wait till i tell you that Trader Joe's is ALDI too.
But that requires some explanation. ALDI stands for Albrecht Discount, because it was founded by 2 brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht. They took over their mother's convenience store in 1945 and focused on conservable items which meant not needing a cold chain and they also aggressively cut items that were underperfoming. This was quite a hit in war ravaged west Germany and in 1950 had 13 stores in west Germany and in 1960 they had over 300.
It was at this point that the brothers had a dispute about the sale of cigarettes. Ofcourse the harmful effects of smoking weren't known (by the public) in 1960. So what was the dispute about? Cigarettes were going to be the most expensive item in their stores by a long shot and Karl thought that it would encourage theft whereas his brother didn't think it be that large am issue.
This dispute proved irreconcilable and they decided to split the stores north to south creating two companies ALDI Nord and ALDI Süd.
ALDI Süd was the first to make their way into America and claimed the Copyright ALDI. So when ALDI Nord expanded overseas they couldn't call themselves ALDI so they bought up a local chain called Trader Joe's and operated under that name ever since, although they did keep most of the corporate structure intact.
But that's why there's 2 ALDI's and why ALDI Nord goes under Trader Joe's in the US.
Ohh extra tidbit, the owner of ALDI Nord, Theo was once kidnapped and held ransome for 7 million marks (at the time 2 million USD). The two kidnappers were arrested during a sting operation helped by the then Bishop of Essen (so I guess that's check mate), but roughly half the money was never recovered.
Theo then went into a legal dispute with the German government arguing that the ransome was effectively a business expense and as such tax deductible. The German government ruled against it.
