The feeling I get, walking into a brand new Aldi supermarket, is like giving the Gold Coast Titans…read morea duffel bag of white before game day... and then testing their pulse.
Forget Bunnings. I think everyone on the planet gets the Bunnings Buzz when the smell of sawn timber hits the nostrils. That subtle waft of brand new paint on products, mixed with shrink-wrapped brushware and... dare I say it, nuts and bolts... Aww yeah. Well a brand new soopy easily outscores the hardware high. Pristine floors that squeak as un-bastardised trolley wheels roll effortlessly across them. *snooooorrrrrttt*
Centimetre perfect product placement. You feel like a criminal removing an item; and as the OCD kicks into overdrive you find yourself hastily rearranging products to ensure that the next customer is greeted with a flawless display.
Let's face it Aldi is *the* unisex supermarket. As a bloke I feel right at home here. In Woolies and Coles, it's "housewifey", and that era is dead son.
This is a brand spanking new Aldi, and it is a biggun. Choose your superlative. Gargantuan. Colossal. Behemoth. It feels freakin' monster.
It positively dwarfs the Aldi at Hornsby, but maybe that's because this new supermarket is almost completely empty. The Aldi sits on the site of the old, old Pizza Hut, that we used to come to as kids. (that Pizza Hut had the original hut-shaped roof that the logo is based upon; was eat-in with the huge red-and-white tablecloths and had the traditional 24" family pizzas. Oh man I can still taste it... and shrinkies??? OH WOW!)
Look. Aldi gets me. Everything is well laid out, the aisles are like twice as wide as the competitors. I could drive a boat down them and still have room for drunk mates to dangle their legs over the sides. Everything is in arms reach, and quite frankly who cares about brands because I look at everything and it is all jumping out at me (yes, even the $3 grout that ISN'T Selleys).
Cola for 69c? reminds me of the days we used to shop "No Name" for cans of cola, which let's face it, were always better than Coke. That flat, caramel 'n' clove cola is tonnes better than the branded alternatives. Always was, but for some reason we all love a brain rinse with some soapy suds.
I dearly wanted to give this a 5, but being a new incarnation there is a few kinks... The service was a bit slower than what I was expecting, and the store was largely unmanned (only 2-3 staff on, one at checkout, one restocking, one doing trolleys).
It's a shame this Aldi isn't in the Parkway Plaza shopping centre, because I think it would get double the foot traffic. But for those new to Aldi's the open space of this stand-alone store may win more converts. It really is exceptional, I'm still giddy.
Are you green with trolleys? This bad boy uses the coin-in-to-get-a-trolley technology. Put your buck in, pull the key out and your $1 is locked away in your trolley whilst you shop. When you return your trolley put the key (from the trolley in front of yours) into the front of your trolley's keyhole to push the $1 clear. Hey presto, that's how they keep the trolleys in the bays instead of roaming the countryside.
