by Dennis Dalman
An ALDI store is being planned for the River Crossings area in Sartell, but a time-line for its construction is not yet known, according to Sartell Engagement Director Nikki Sweeter.
The development plan is currently under review, and once it’s fully approved by the fire marshal and a building expert, more details will be released by the city.
ALDI (often written as Aldi or Aldi’s) is a discount, small-sized grocery store with prices generally lower than at big-box grocery stores. Currently, here are two other ALDI stores in the immediate area – one in Waite Park, one in Little Falls.
“River Crossings,” formerly a wooded neighborhood of about a dozen homes, became a commercial development area a couple of years ago. The site, above the Mississippi River, is bordered on its south edge by Highway 15 and on its west side by Riverside Avenue.
Much of the wooded area there has been cleared to make possible businesses. Currently, there are three on that site: Mister Car Wash, a Chipotle’s restaurant (Tex-Mex-style foods) and Starbuck’s (coffee).
ALDI is short for ALbrecht DIscounts. That is the name of the store founded by Karl and Theo Albrecht, German brothers whose mother started a small “Albrecht’s” grocery store in 1913 in the German city of Essen. Later, in 1946, the two brothers began operating the store and began to extend ALDI stores to other cities, other countries.
ALDI’s current headquarters in the United States is located in Batavia, Ill. There are 75 ALDI stores in Minnesota and thousands worldwide with about 100,000 employees.
ALDI specializes in obtaining the lowest prices on quality foods through exclusive deals with its suppliers, many of them big-name suppliers.
The stores are well-known for fast, efficient service. Each product is marked with multiple bar codes so that at the check-out lines, the scanning process goes very quickly. Customers bring their own bags, totes or boxes, or they can buy paper bags in the store. Customers can also place a quarter in a grocery cart, and when they are done shopping, they can bring the cart back, hook it onto a line of other returned carts and get the quarter back.
The first ALDI store in the United States opened in Iowa in 1976. Now there are more than 2,000 stores in 36 states, with 15,000 employees.
This is a photograph taken in the early 100s in Essen, Germany. It is the Albrecht grocery store, opened by the mother of Karl and Theo Albrecht, who later became the founders of the ALDI grocery-store chain. Sartell is expected to have an ALDI store in the River Crossings development.
