These are examples of just a few of the surprisedly everyday low-priced organic groceries at ALDI. I’ve cut my family’s grocery bill in half!
As a blogger/YouTuber, I get invited to a lot of events and get asked to sample even more products. Sometimes I love them, and sometimes they get thrown into the toss pile never to be spoken of again. After all the products I’ve seen demonstrated or have gotten to test myself over the years, I’ve never been converted into as big of a fan as I am of ALDI supermarkets.
ALDI is now the only place I shop for my family’s everyday groceries.
Not only have I been able to cut my family’s weekly grocery bill by more than half, I’m able to buy more organic food than ever before. My family is eating healthier foods at a ridiculously lower cost.
Some items from ALDI’s organic and all-natural SimplyNature line.
Foods that I have been avoiding – cereals, convenience snacks, fresh & frozen berries – are now priced low enough for me to buy in bulk. I think the biggest sticker shock came when I saw how cheap their organic and all-natural cereals are. I can get an organic Cheerios look-alike for less than $2.00 a box, and that’s an everyday price. ALDI doesn’t have sales – they keep their prices low every day to save us time and to assure us that we’re always getting a deal.
[Click here for my favorite healthy snacks for travel.]
In fact, ALDI does a whole bunch of stuff to save us money. I listed a few of them in my first ALDI blog, but I learned so much more about how the company cuts costs and passes them onto us when I visited the headquarters in Geneva, Illinois earlier this month.
Who needs elevator music when I can get organic bananas for 69 cents?
In addition to having the customers “rent” their shopping carts for a quarter and bag their own groceries, ALDI uses countless time and money saving tricks including shipping all their products in ready-to-display packaging, not accepting credit cards (only debit and EBT), not playing music in their stores, and putting multiple large UPC labels on every product allowing the cashier to zip you through checkout. This saves both time and money for ALDI, and the savings are passed on through lower-priced groceries.
[Click here to read more about my first ALDI shopping experience.]
But does the food taste good?
When I first heard about the super-low prices at ALDI, I was skeptical about the quality of the food – especially the taste. I’m super-particular about a lot of the foods I eat, and it would take a lot for me to switch to another brand when it comes to stuff like guacamole and Greek yogurt (Baby Summer’s favorite).
While visiting the headquarters and ALDI test kitchen, the other bloggers and I were invited to a blind Switch & Save taste test where we were asked to pick our favorites between several sets of food items including tortilla chips, gourmet cheese, crackers, guacamole, Greek yogurt, and other common “party” snacks. We all had strong opinions about most of the items and we were almost always in unanimous agreement on which choices were better. On a couple items like the guacamole and tortilla chips, we didn’t see a difference in taste.
What we didn’t expect was that our choices were overwhelmingly in favor of ALDI, and ALDI’s prices blew the competition out of the water. I can’t believe I’ve been a Chobani lover and devotee for so long, and a cheaper, tastier option was waiting for me at ALDI the whole time.
Can I actually make my favorite foods using only ALDI ingredients?
The best part of the weekend was definitely the smoothie competition. The bloggers were invited into the ALDI test kitchen that we found packed with fresh fruits, vegetables, and other exclusive ALDI products like almond milk, Greek yogurt, and nuts to make our own original smoothie recipes.
My good friend and amazing fitness YouTuber and author, Sarah Dussault from SarahFit.com, and I went into full-tilt competition mode. I won’t tell you that she may or may not have been heckling the other bloggers’ smoothie recipes.
I’m very proud to say that my recipe won one of three $100 ALDI gift certificate prizes… I officially make prize-winning smoothies, folks. For a bunch of my free smoothie and vegetarian recipes, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter here and get them and more exclusive BexLife goodies instantly.
Sarah’s smoothie was one of my personal favorites. Pin the picture below to share it with your friends on Pinterest, and let me know how you like it! Mine is also below. I rarely measure out my ingredients – I just keep playing until its perfect. My superfood smoothie is packed with everything!
I also walked away with a stack of gourmet recipes using only ALDI ingredients that I’ve already tried out on my family with very happy results. We were able to sample some of the recipes on the evening of our visit to ALDI HQ, and they were delicious. You can get the recipes we tried and more on ALDI’s recipe section of their website by clicking here. They’re all created by ALDI’s expert staff of chefs, but they’re easy enough for us to make at home.
Overall, the experience at ALDI headquarters was great – the food was delicious, the folks from ALDI were super-nice, and I got a real education on how to save money on my grocery bill while feeding my family healthy food.
I’ll still visit my local farms for fresh produce this summer and continue to grow my own veggies along with my backyard chickens, but I’ll never shop in another grocery store. I’m a forever ALDI fan, for real.
Stay blissed in! xx
