Long line greets grocery store opening

California, MD — The Tri-County area has a new grocery store. It’s the first in the area for national chain ALDI. The closest is on U.S. 301 in Brandywine.

Doors opened at 9 a.m. Nov. 5 after a ribbon cutting at the new store just across from Wildewood in the new Lexington Exchange Shopping Center. The parking lot was full and shoppers walked as far as the movie theater parking lot. The big draw was a golden ticket for the first 100 shoppers, with each ticket good for ALDI gift certificates of different values.

ALDI has expanded rapidly with than 1,400 stores, including 70 in the region that runs from Pennsylvania to Virginia. Vice president of that region, Jeffrey Baehr, led a tour for The BayNet along with County Commissioner President Randy Guy and Deputy Director of the Department of Economic Development Robin Finnacom. Additional store executives led others for pre-opening tours.

ALDI bills itself the “low-price grocery leader,” with savings up to 50 percent based on a price comparison of comparable products sold at leading national retail grocery stores. Those savings are achieved a variety of ways. For one, the store has a list called “How to Shop at ALDI,” that includes bring your own bags or buy reusable bags at the store, pay 25 cents for grocery carts and getting a refund at the end for return, no credit cards at this time and self-packing of the bags by the customer.

For instance, Baehr said that the requirement to pay for the carts discourages customers from leaving them on the parking lot and requiring store employees to pick them up. That saves time and money which is passed on to the customers.

Baehr said they are testing credit cards at several stores in Virginia to see if they will roll that out, which he noted was a balance between saving money to pass on to the customer and customer convenience.

Baehr also explained that 90 percent of the packaged items in ALDI are store brands at lower cost. ALDI also controls costs by having just a few brands of each type of item. And they have weekly specials, called ALDI Finds, which rotate with the seasons and including discount pricing.

Items are shelved in the boxes in which they arrive at the store, similar to some other national warehouse operations such as BJ’s, thus also saving manpower. The new store has 12-20 employees, which is also lower than a typical grocery store.

The new store’s manager is a seven-year local resident, Brock Ackiss, who is former manager of Panera Bread in California and the Golden Corral in Lexington Park. Ackiss said ALDI is a great company to work for. “It’s good to see some businesses that will help the community,” he said.