To Aldi Or Not To Aldi?

I have heard sooo much lately about Aldi, from other bloggers and friends. Everyone just bragged about how great the prices were! I am not the kind to scour the ads and go to 5 stores just to get a deal, so I was intrigued by the fact that you could head to Aldi and stock up for cheaper! Robbie and I haven't done a complete grocery trip in probably a year (LOL). So, we had to stock up on sauces, vinegar, all kinds of things that you don't have to buy too often. And it sounded like Aldi was the perfect place for it.

Last night, we ate an early dinner and headed over to the new Aldi behind Southpoint. I had planned a few meals for dinners, and had a list for breakfast and lunch too! The first thing that we had to do was pay a quarter for a cart. You get it back when you return it, but it helps cut down on costs to have people chasing the carts in the parking lot, etc. So, not too bad of a tradeoff. We actually got inside and filled up our cart so fast and realized we needed another one. Robbie reminded me you have to have another quarter, ha! Of course I didn't have one, but had the change for one. I stopped a couple and we exchanged currencies haha! We ended up filling two carts! We got a ton of things that we usually don't get. For example, we usually try to get ONE cereal that we all like. Well, the cereal was so cheap (like $1.69), that we got 3 kinds! And chips were cheap too! We NEVER buy chips! But everything was around the $1.50 range. So we're trying out some new flavors. William ate a pack of fruit snacks from there while we shopped. He had no complaints!

For those of you who don't know, Aldi has a very limited number of name brands. Everything is pretty much Aldi brand. They did have Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (my fave!) and I noticed a few other brands (Pampers, Bounty, Cheerios). We mainly bought Aldi brand stuff though. I had a few friends give me some tips. Laura told me that their pork is pretty good, so we got a tenderloin for fairly cheap, and they have a pack of 2 filets that she swears are awesome also! The chicken didn't look so great, and the butcher counter at HT has them for cheaper anyway. Canned veggies were really cheap! Less than fifty cents for green beans and corn! Now, as for how all of this tastes, stay tuned! We haven't tried anything yet. If you are a name brand snob (I totally used to be), then this isn't the place for you. I have ONE requirement for name brand - ketchup. It has to be Heinz. I cannot stand anything else. But that's not too expensive of an item at another store anyway. We didn't get deli meat there, because we were told it wasn't that great. So I will be visiting an actual deli for that. We ended up filling up two carts to the brim, and spent $121.00. Robbie and I figured it would have been closer to $200 in another store. We actually had to head to Wal Mart after to get a few things Aldi didn't have, and we did notice that the items at Aldi were cheaper than even at Wal Mart!

So, I give it two thumbs up! It's small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed, and had a ton of crackers, chips, cereals, etc. William loves things like that, and definitely doesn't care what brand it is, so it is a win-win!