If there is one good thing that the pandemic has brought, it's that grocery store chains have upped their delivery and pick up games. When these things work, they can be big time savers just like when they don't, it makes you ask why even offer it? Sadly, Aldi seems to fall into the latter.
While I really want to like the Aldi curbside pickup concept, it's got two major flaws. 1. Not all locations offer it. This Aldi location is not that close to me but the two locations that are closer (Bethlehem & Allentown) do not offer curbside. 2. A real biggie is that what Aldi allows you to place an order for on the website has zero resemblance to what is actually in the store/will get picked for your order.
I.E. = My most recent pickup order was for 62 things. Out of that, 16 were unavailable and 12 got substituted for things that in all cases were higher priced and a few of those are not really substitutions that I think are realistically applicable. Subbing Blueberry Bagels for Blueberry Muffins is an interesting stretch.
Pandemic/Shmandemic. I place curbside orders frequently with Giant and this problem does not exist with them. Sure they may be out of one thing or they may have the item you want just in a different size whereas with Aldi, my phone blows up with notification texts as the employee goes through the order subbing and refunding the unavailable items.
At the end of the day Aldi is never going to be a singular grocery shopping experience for anyone. It can't be because their inventory footprint is too small to make that viable. But at the same time, if you're going to offer a service like curbside, you need to be able to make a more realistic go at linking actual store inventory to what the website is showing as available for ordering. It can't be such a shot in the dark. read more