Aldi was the brainchild of German brothers Theo and Karl Albrecht.
Few photos of these super-secretive billionaires exist, and they didn't give very many interviews,
but here's what we do know about the brothers behind a grocery giant.
Karl Albrecht was born on February 20, 1920, and his younger brother Theodor arrived on
March 28, 1922.
They got their start in the grocery business by pulling a wooden wagon and selling buns
along the streets of Essen, Germany.
Their neighborhood was a rundown working-class area.
The widely accepted story is that their father, also named Karl, was a miner who had to quit
after contracting black lung.
So he began running a small corner store, but according to his grandson, also named
Karl, that's not true.
The third-generation Karl Albrecht says that his grandfather wasn't a miner, but rather,
a baker's apprentice.
Until, that is, he gave up the trade to get involved in running a storefront, a business
his wife took over when he was drafted in 1914.
In a rare interview with a German-language newspaper, Aldi co-founder Karl described
himself as "lucky."
Not only did he survive tuberculosis and a brush with death at age 5, he also credited
his mother for getting him and his brother into the business at a young age and showing
them what it took to run a successful store.
The original Aldi looked very different than today's stores.
It was only about 1,000 square feet, and it was located on the ground floor of a four-story
brick rowhouse.
The Albrechts lived above the shop, and making ends meet wasn't easy.
In an interview with a German-language newspaper, Karl said that what made the business most
difficult was all the competition that they faced.
But he was able to realize just what he needed to do to compete.
Chain stores were luring customers away with low prices, and the brothers knew that if
they wanted to advance in the world, they were going to have to win those customers
back.
And they knew the value of sticking with the grocery store business long-term.
As Karl said,
"I would have done something else, but I recognized as a child that you can grow up as a grocer
even in times of crisis."
The Albrechts were always on the front lines of the business, and at the time that they
were embarking on building their empire, it was as if Aldi was simply meant to be.
According to Karl,
"I always believed in my ideas, and consistently implemented them.
It was so clear, so simple, anyone could have done it."
"We know what you're thinking.
Fill your pockets with savings.
Aldi: shop differentli."
During World War II, Essen was a prime target for Allied bombing runs.
According to The New York Times, more than 200 bombing missions were run over the city,
but somehow, the Albrechts' little grocery store was spared.
Both brothers were drafted, and both spent much of the war in Allied prisoner-of-war
camps.
Theo was sent to fight in the Afrika Korps, and sources vary on whether he was captured
in Italy or Tunisia.
Karl, meanwhile, was sent to the Russian front.
After only a few months he suffered a wound that nearly required the amputation of his
leg.
He then later survived capture and a weeks-long march across the Eastern Front.
Many of his fellow soldiers were either shot or sent back to the front.
After the brothers were released from the POW camps, they returned to their hometown
and the family store.
Five years after they took over the business, they had already grown to have 31 branches.
Two years after that, Aldi had expanded to more than 300 locations.
Life in post-war Germany was difficult, and it shaped the way the Albrecht brothers did
business.
They had little money themselves, so when they were able to re-open their family store,
they could only afford to offer basic staple items like noodles, pasta, and soap.
Almost accidentally, they had stumbled upon a brilliant business model: offer the basics
at a cheap price point, and people will come.
They started cutting costs and waste right from the beginning, and that included cutting
out what had been a common sight in grocery stores until then: the counter clerk.
For a long time, people would come into the store, tell the clerk what they wanted, and
have their order filled.
The Albrecht brothers picked up on the American tradition of self-service, and that allowed
them to cut costs even more.
This is a practice that Aldi still uses today by having customers bag their own groceries.
The Albrechts' low-cost, no-frills approach earned them something of a cult following,
and they were so popular that they opened four more Aldi stores by 1948.
Those early stores were about the size of a dorm room, and each one maintained the same
bare-bones look that the company is still known for today.
In 1961, Aldi underwent a major change, and it happened for the same reason that many
families change: a dispute between brothers.
It all came down to whether or not they were going to sell cigarettes.
Theo was in favor of adding them to Aldi's shelves, but Karl was 100 percent against
it.
He believed the move would attract and encourage shoplifting, and it proved to be a dealbreaker.
At the time, they were operating about 300 Aldi stores.
They drew a line right through their hometown of Essen, designating that the "Aldi equator."
Theo took over the stores in the north while Karl took the south, thus splitting the locations
in an impressively amicable way.
While the division led to stores that carried different products, had different logos, and
were identified by different colors, the brothers remained on good terms.
They even still partnered up to share information and negotiate with suppliers, using their
joint weight to get even better deals.
"Not everybody can be a winner like Aldi.
Their products have won over 400 awards for quality.
Kinda like Cooper's solar system."
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