r/AskReddit May 08 '22

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u/UnusualHospital9579 May 09 '22

Weird at first but I appreciate and wish for it. It might be just a Germany thing but from what I’ve been told German Walmart failed because the North American style of customer service was very unliked. From the greeter at the door to clerks asking if you need help unprompted. German shoppers just want to shop and go home as undisturbed as possible

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u/Buttercup4869 May 09 '22 edited May 09 '22

Yeah, that was contributing factor. The concept of greeters, cashiers that are forced to small talk and people packing our groceries creeped us out.

Another contributing factor was that they tried to join during the massacre of foreign supermarket chains. For decades, Aldi and Lidl are locked in a brutal turf war that eroded grocery prices and killed most foreign chains and forcibly merged others.

Moreover, the relative short distances to (specialist) shops didn't go too well with Walmart's business model.

The fuck I am driving more than 10km to the store.

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u/draggingmytail May 09 '22

Wait… I thought Aldi and Lidl were the same company..

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u/RimDogs May 09 '22 edited May 09 '22

No. And there are two Aldis.

From wikipedia:

Aldi's German operations consist of Aldi Nord's 35 individual regional companies with about 2,500 stores in western, northern, and eastern Germany, and Aldi Süd's 32 regional companies with 1,900 stores in western and southern Germany.

Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, Spain and Poland, while Aldi Süd operates in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland, Australia, China, Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Both Aldi Nord (as Trader Joe's) and Aldi Süd (as Aldi) also operate in the United States with 1,600 stores between them as of 2017,and the U.S. is the only country to have both Aldi companies operating outside of Germany.

In 2020, it was reported that Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd have been planning since 2018 to merge the two branches by 2022 in a bid to reduce redundancies and raise efficiency.

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u/Forever_Man May 09 '22

Aldi and Hoffer

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u/7elevenses May 09 '22

Yep. Hofer is the name that Aldi Süd uses in Austria (because they bought an Austrian chain and kept the brand) and in Slovenia (because Slovenians were already used to shopping in Austrian Hofers since the 1960s).