everyone's just grabbing bottles out of the packages just like in Germany. hey
guys! what's up? it's Kelly again and welcome back to my channel. for those of
you who might not know me and you're new to my channel and you're wondering why
I'm on YouTube, I mean I'm also wondering why I'm on
YouTube, I'm gonna give you a little bit of context as to why I'm making this video.
so I lived in Germany for about a year and a half and I just got back to the
states and I've been living in DC for two months and my German boyfriend who
I've been with for over a year now is here with me in DC visiting on a
non-immigrant visa. we went to a grocery store like the first weekend he was here
and he suffered from what could only be described as sticker shock which
basically means that he was floored by how expensive the price of food was here
in DC specifically, it's different all over the country, but specifically in DC
it's very expensive. and so we started looking around trying to find some
cheaper grocery stores to go to maybe a little bit outside of the city and we
stumbled across a bunch of all ALDIs. so we headed to an ALDI and he was like a
kid in the candy shop you guys. he was so excited to see the prices which were
much more reasonable and just like having that little bit of familiarity in
a foreign country for him and it was really exciting to see. so I thought
hey why not make a video to show you guys, because I have a lot of Germans
that watch my channel, to show you guys what an ALDI in the US looks like. and
for those of you who are living in the US if you didn't know, ALDI is actually
a german grocery store chain and it's here in the US and they actually run
their stores very similar here as they do in germany so if you've been shopping
in ALDI, you've been shopping the german way the whole time! so i'm gonna
take you guys around the store and i'll point out some of the differences and
some of the similarities between ALDIs in the US and ALDIs in germany.
so let's check it out!
so first things first the carts, just like in Germany, you have to deposit a
coin to be able to pull one out. I've got my quarter here but in Germany it would
be a 1 euro coin.
so if you watch my German grocery store video then you would have heard me talk
about how the entrances to grocery stores are a little bit different
between Germany and the US. oftentimes in Germany you'll see these like gates that
will open up to divide like the entrance from the exit. in the US, usually you
have like entirely separate doors and then here you'll see like the food is
being used as a lane to separate the entrance from the checkout area. it's
actually kind of funny and I'm sure it's just a coincidence but the peanut butter
aisle here is just as sad as the peanut butter aisles that I would see in
Germany. usually in US grocery stores I mean you have at least like 20 different
types of peanut butter to choose from. here, there's only like four so if you
look behind me you'll see that all of the food items are being held mostly in
like these little cardboard crates that they come in whenever they're shipped to
the grocery store. so US grocery stores normally don't display their products
like that. normally you take all of the products out of the boxes and then put
them on the shelves but this is an ALDI and so they're doing it the same way
that you would see it in Germany which is in the boxes. and I think probably
because it cuts down in time which means it cuts down in labor which means you
have to hire fewer employees which of course means lower prices. now this
is actually something that you would not see in a German ALDI because they don't
refrigerate their eggs. in the US we do because during the whole farming process
we actually wash the eggs which means we wash off the protective coating that is
kind of I don't know given to the egg whenever it's laid and so we have to
keep them refrigerated whereas in Germany they don't wash them and so
they're able to store eggs at room temperature so you would never see eggs
in a cooler like this they would just be sitting out on a shelf.
these spices are so much cheaper here than they are in other grocery stores in
the US.
you really just wouldn't see bags of flour and sugar sitting on pallets on
the ground in like a normal US grocery store but you're seeing it here in the
ALDI in the US and you would see that everywhere in grocery stores in Germany.
correct me if I'm wrong but I just really don't remember seeing that many
energy drinks in Germany. I would see like the 5-hour energy drinks like
what's over my shoulder here but not like a lot of monsters and Red Bulls and
so on which is what you see in a lot of US grocery stores and you're seeing the
knockoff versions here in this ALDI in the US. everyone's just grabbing bottles
out of the packages just like in Germany. these water bottles are a lot smaller
than what you see in Germany. these are only about a half a liter and in Germany you
usually buy bottles that are one and a half liters. I've been to a couple
different ALDIs now and they all kind of have a little bit of a different
setup but pretty much with the same idea of using the cardboard boxes to display
their produce. in other US grocery stores, you just wouldn't really see that.
they're normally shelved or in special little sections... they're not sitting in
the boxes that they were like shipped to the store in.
I think one of the food prices that stuck out like the most to my boyfriend was
the price of bell peppers or paprika as Germans will call them. in Germany you
can get like three multicolored bell peppers for one euro. here, you're lucky
to get one bell pepper for $1. it's a lot more expensive and I remember talking to
one of my classmates here about it and he was just like "oh yeah you're not
gonna be able to afford the multicolored Peppers anymore like you get green."
I'm really excited guys, I just found some white asparagus! in Germany this is
known as spargle and it is a huge huge deal in Germany
it's seasonal in the spring and everybody just goes crazy for it. I mean
it's not fresh but I'm really excited to find some in the US and I'm gonna buy
this and take it home to my boyfriend. so it looks like I found the authentic
German food section and all of the food seems to be produced by the same
company which is Deutsch couch a okay, I really didn't learn German. German
Kitchen, super creative name there and since I know you guys are interested in
seeing what the prices are here, I'll show them to you and just so you know this
really is significantly cheaper than what you would find in like a normal US
grocery store, at least here in DC.
don't worry, guys we've got some German sauerkraut here too. for my German
viewers write in the comments what you guys think of this section of German
food I'm really curious what you guys think about it. I went to a lot of
different grocery stores in Germany and there are in a lot of them there were
like the US little section or the American section of food and it would
basically just be like a bunch of pop-tarts and like barbecue sauce and I
don't know... salsa and so I'm curious what you guys think of our
interpretation of German food.
I am looking at all these cheeses and I just started laughing because the first
weekend my boyfriend was here we went to a grocery store so he could pick out
whatever he wanted to eat and he, without me realizing it, bought American cheese
which is a terrible terrible type of cheese. it's like the least flavorful
plastic tasting crap you could buy so he was a little like this is what cheese is
like in the US? but we do have better kinds. it's a really sad bread section.
the tea and coffee aisle in this ALDI just isn't as big as the ones that I saw
in the ALDIs in Germany. alright guys I walked through the whole grocery
store twice looking for it but I did not see any boxed, shelf-stable like
room-temperature H milk like you would see in Germany. I only saw fresh milk and
condensed milk. another difference I want to point out is that this ALDI in the US
is super air-conditioned compared to the ALDIs in Germany but guys it is like
98 degrees out right now in fact it might have hit 99 by the time that I've
been walking around in here that is so hot!! and if they didn't have
air-conditioning at the rate that they have it in here, all of the produce would
go bad. this is some really patriotic packaging. it even has a verse from our
national anthem. alright guys, behind me is the gummy
aisle. do you see all the gummies? no you probably don't
because it's just this one little section of Haribo gummy bears. that's it.
not this like excessive huge area of gummis like you would see in a German
ALDI. this is it. it's crazy! these are my boyfriend's
absolute favorite. pretty cool that they have them here. German ALDIs don't
accept credit cards because then they would have to pay transaction fees which
would drive up the prices of their food. This ALDI has a bagging counter just
like all the ALDIs you see in Germany. seriously guys this is not like a normal
feature in American grocery stores, I've only seen this in Germany.
wow that was some insane technique from the cashier. I am thoroughly impressed
that girl would fit totally right in in Germany. if you guys watch my German
grocery store video then you would have heard me talk about how it is like
complete and utter panic at the cashier at the grocery stores for me when I'm
checking out in Germany because the cashiers are just throwing items into
your cart as fast as possible, it is like a sprint.
you're there trying to bag everything as fast as you can and then you're trying
to pay and it's just like it's kind of really overwhelming. in the US, we
oftentimes have baggers and if you don't have a bagger, then the cashier will
actually be the one bagging all of your goods into whether it's your bags or
maybe you're paying extra for bags and it's a much more like slow calm process
and of course there is usually some good old American small talk. so I was really
curious what the kind of like checkout situation would be in the ALDI in the
US, if it would be like the German Way or if it would be like a normal US
grocery store and it looks like it's exactly the same as it is in Germany but
fortunately I speak the language so I'm able to communicate a little easier with
the cashier and she actually did, I didn't record it, but she did tell me
that they are timed at the ALDIs here for how quickly they check people out so
it looks like it's really similar overall to the way that all these are
run in Germany. a lot cheaper because they cut down on labor, they cut down on
the amount of work that needs to get done and they're able to be much more
efficient than probably what the average US grocery store is therefore they're
paying their employees less money by paying fewer salaries and so they're able to
keep the prices lower... it all makes sense now! I think I'm learning more about the
German discount culture now that I'm not in Germany than from when I was in
Germany. alright guys I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did give it a
thumbs up that helps me out a lot! if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, go
ahead and click Subscribe I'll be posting videos every week at least once
a week. and thank you so much to all of my patrons! you guys are amazing for all
of the support you've given me. if you're interested in my patreon
campaign go ahead and check out the link I'll put it in the description below.
I'll see you guys next time! bye! it actually took me a while to be able to
film me putting my cart back into the little line of carts to be able to get
my quarter deposit back and film that because so many people here were like I'll
give you a quarter if you give me your cart. I'm like I'm trying to do something
here that's weird and you probably wouldn't understand
so I.... fine. just take it.