99 CENT ONLY closing

[ClownLoach]

This rookie DM smells a bit like F&E....................what could go wrong?

No matter the cookie cutter format (very F&E) you need seasoned folks (well versed in the local market) to establish a NEW Brand.

F&E did not even want grocery retail experience at first. That changed of course and the only stores that did well were run by experienced grocers. The top 5 stores were run by the most experienced grocers.

Good luck with that Aldi.

It appears that these DM in training positions require that one is willing to train and then move anywhere in the country that the company requires once the year is done. So they're going to move the more experienced people to open the new markets, then put the new people in old established markets. And remember that Target and other retailers have had practices for years where a degree is required but experience is optional since they know they can pay far less to an inexperienced person and train them without any "bad habits" and "well at Kmart we did it this way" and such. That is also typical practice of many retailers to require experience in designated areas and relocate the inexperienced rookies which is unfortunate, for example it is rare to see one promoted within California at national chains because the difficulty of operating is perceived to be extra high (especially because of legal compliance issues that they have to be trained on). Meanwhile they might designate Alabama or Indiana or other markets in flyover country as the "starter" markets for new promotes and new hires. So basically unless you're willing to move to a place like that you're never going to be promoted into upper management.

Also it appears upon further research that Aldi has followed this model for decades as they grew from a few dozen stores to thousands in the US, so it must work for them. I have to guess that because of their proprietary operations, systems etc. that they would have a lot of difficulty integrating managers from a traditional grocer into their company as they just don't do things the same way at all, nor do they pay as well as traditional grocers.

[veteran+]

Perhaps but SoCal requires a little "something" more for success.

I predict their way of "talent recruiting" will fail in SoCal.

[ClownLoach]

Perhaps but SoCal requires a little "something" more for success.

I predict their way of "talent recruiting" will fail in SoCal.

My point is that they're recruiting here, but the jobs won't be here.

I think that could be a fair evaluation based on inconsistencies reported with Aldi. I have seen mediocre but not bad execution in parts of the LA basin, good execution in some parts of Orange County, and stellar execution in my area. Others here report some pockets of bad bad bad. So that indicates they might not be as successful in importing talent from other markets with the tools to be successful in California, some of the people they've brought are obviously stars while others do not shine as bright.

But then they do not seem to be a company that will tolerate inconsistency or deviation from their programs. Since they obviously have some success in California I have to believe that the execution issues stem from inability to execute their programs, and the leaders who can't execute will likely be replaced.

[BillyGr]

To be clear, they're looking for District Managers In Training who are finishing up their degrees. They have a training program that is almost a year long. The pay and benefits in my opinion are poor based on what is shown. That is a stressful job and I would expect more than two weeks of vacation after two years. They do provide a company car so you don't have to run your own into the ground, but then you can make a lot of money driving your own car at other companies with non taxable mileage reimbursement if you are willing to drive something economical like a Prius. There was no mention of a bonus plan or long term incentive. I am assuming they pay more and don't train for a year if you're experienced, but the open positions for those were mainly back East unfortunately so they would not work for me. Pay seemed comparable to what Target offers a Store Manager right out of college as well. An experienced District Manager should be able to easily make double what they're offering with far better benefits elsewhere.

Which seems kind of odd, since they have been known to pay their regular employees more than many stores (likely since they are doing more work, being out in the store if not needed at cashier stations, for example).

[storewanderer]

To be clear, they're looking for District Managers In Training who are finishing up their degrees. They have a training program that is almost a year long. The pay and benefits in my opinion are poor based on what is shown. That is a stressful job and I would expect more than two weeks of vacation after two years. They do provide a company car so you don't have to run your own into the ground, but then you can make a lot of money driving your own car at other companies with non taxable mileage reimbursement if you are willing to drive something economical like a Prius. There was no mention of a bonus plan or long term incentive. I am assuming they pay more and don't train for a year if you're experienced, but the open positions for those were mainly back East unfortunately so they would not work for me. Pay seemed comparable to what Target offers a Store Manager right out of college as well. An experienced District Manager should be able to easily make double what they're offering with far better benefits elsewhere.

Which seems kind of odd, since they have been known to pay their regular employees more than many stores (likely since they are doing more work, being out in the store if not needed at cashier stations, for example).

Is that still the case? Do they still pay higher than other stores... based on what I see in SoCal it looks to me like they are paying less than Costco, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target... their quality of employee is, at best, on par with what I see at the chain grocers who have very low union starting wage scales in place that are not competitive with many other retailer starting wages, and do not attract even close to the best quality of new hire...

[storewanderer]

Perhaps but SoCal requires a little "something" more for success.

I predict their way of "talent recruiting" will fail in SoCal.

Do they want "talent" or do they want "robots?"

F&E wanted "robots" - the problem was F&E was not a proven formula with a proven tract record. Oops.

Aldi however thinks it is hot stuff. They think they are so hot they will show everyone else how the grocery business is done. And they have a tract record of success, globally, that cannot be denied. So maybe for them this "robot" type approach will work...? Until it doesn't...

As long as Aldi has enough customers willing to go there to that store due to pricing reasons (since there is NO other reason to shop there), they will have some degree of success even with this way of "talent recruiting."

I also find it ironic they would want to recruit people who are IN SoCal and potentially send them to IL, OK, or some other middle of the US place (where pay scales are much lower). Who would take that offer? I've dealt with a retailer based in CA a number of years back who needed to get some store/regional management up in Reno and I told them it would not be easy to find, the stores didn't have talent that was promotable (vacant store manager positions or weak store managers in place- and even worse in the pipeline) and the attitude was "everyone wants to leave California- we shouldn't have any problems getting management up there in Reno." Okay... then they proceeded to offer like 20% less pay in Reno for salaried. Nobody transferred and eventually they did external hiring... to this day a lot of store manager level turnover at said retailer.

[Romr123]

I think y'all are missing the point here....this is nothing more/less than retail and restaurant has always done to fill their management pipeline...in the 50s (at least) onward all the chains (both department, Sears/Penney and dime store) had pipeline programs....they have just migrated toward Target, WM and (now) Aldi. This is not much more than replacing campus recruiting and getting their name in front of graduates from secondary/tertiary schools in the west. Walmart and Target have done this for years---in a former life I was recruiting for my company at an MBA recruiting event in Chicago next to Walmart (looking for Silicon Valley tech-bros...shall we say there wasn't much evidence of Bentonville in the recruiters/recruitees) and Target (I still have a workout shirt they were giving away--it was 7/8 recruiting and 1/8 brand building for them)

Imagine graduating at 23 from West Lompoc Polytechnic State University (I purposely mix up the name here) or Wholly Moses College with a pretty generic non-STEM degree...looking for some adventure---unaware of Aldi---never going to get into Target or other more prestigious retailer's management training program...I can see the appeal.

Likewise Aldi needs to feed their pipeline with young enthusiastic rule-followers as they continue their rollout.

It just came to me---Aldi is the Southwest Airlines of the grocery biz....egalitarian and uncustomized but reliable and inexpensive.

[veteran+]

Perhaps but SoCal requires a little "something" more for success.

I predict their way of "talent recruiting" will fail in SoCal.

Do they want "talent" or do they want "robots?"

F&E wanted "robots" - the problem was F&E was not a proven formula with a proven tract record. Oops.

Aldi however thinks it is hot stuff. They think they are so hot they will show everyone else how the grocery business is done. And they have a tract record of success, globally, that cannot be denied. So maybe for them this "robot" type approach will work...? Until it doesn't...

As long as Aldi has enough customers willing to go there to that store due to pricing reasons (since there is NO other reason to shop there), they will have some degree of success even with this way of "talent recruiting."

I also find it ironic they would want to recruit people who are IN SoCal and potentially send them to IL, OK, or some other middle of the US place (where pay scales are much lower). Who would take that offer? I've dealt with a retailer based in CA a number of years back who needed to get some store/regional management up in Reno and I told them it would not be easy to find, the stores didn't have talent that was promotable (vacant store manager positions or weak store managers in place- and even worse in the pipeline) and the attitude was "everyone wants to leave California- we shouldn't have any problems getting management up there in Reno." Okay... then they proceeded to offer like 20% less pay in Reno for salaried. Nobody transferred and eventually they did external hiring... to this day a lot of store manager level turnover at said retailer.

I think Aldi wants robots as well (it's a European in America thing).

Tesco believed it WAS a proven formula with proof all around the world and they thought they were HOT stuff. No matter that America is NOT the rest of the world (they arrogantly refused to listen).

The difference to me is that Aldi took a slower approach with an organic attitude (until more recently). They clearly succeeded!

I'm just not sure that their Talent Scouting style will work with California en masse. After all, California is California and we all know what that means (unique and weird).

[storewanderer]

I think y'all are missing the point here....this is nothing more/less than retail and restaurant has always done to fill their management pipeline...in the 50s (at least) onward all the chains (both department, Sears/Penney and dime store) had pipeline programs....they have just migrated toward Target, WM and (now) Aldi. This is not much more than replacing campus recruiting and getting their name in front of graduates from secondary/tertiary schools in the west. Walmart and Target have done this for years---in a former life I was recruiting for my company at an MBA recruiting event in Chicago next to Walmart (looking for Silicon Valley tech-bros...shall we say there wasn't much evidence of Bentonville in the recruiters/recruitees) and Target (I still have a workout shirt they were giving away--it was 7/8 recruiting and 1/8 brand building for them)

Imagine graduating at 23 from West Lompoc Polytechnic State University (I purposely mix up the name here) or Wholly Moses College with a pretty generic non-STEM degree...looking for some adventure---unaware of Aldi---never going to get into Target or other more prestigious retailer's management training program...I can see the appeal.

Likewise Aldi needs to feed their pipeline with young enthusiastic rule-followers as they continue their rollout.

It just came to me---Aldi is the Southwest Airlines of the grocery biz....egalitarian and uncustomized but reliable and inexpensive.

Southwest at least tried to have some personality and enthusiasm back in the 90's and into the 00's with the employees. Once in a while Southwest still does some funny stuff. Just recently at LAX when I was waiting for a flight some Southwest employees came out and set up a ring toss or something game and gave prizes away to a group of kids.

The Aldi employees do not show any personality or enthusiasm. They definitely don't do anything to somehow make an engaging in-store experience when you go into the store, it feels like they want you out of there from the second you walked in, and you get no service; pay deposit for carts, long checkout line at their infamous ONE open register (even if the cashier is efficient), just a complete miserable experience. But at least the price is low-ish... I guess. I am actually surprised how much I dislike these stores in SoCal/AZ. I am very price sensitive and I want the best deal... but this store just doesn't appeal to me at all. Unbelievably bad service/employee interactions have ruined it for me.

[BillyGr]

Which seems kind of odd, since they have been known to pay their regular employees more than many stores (likely since they are doing more work, being out in the store if not needed at cashier stations, for example).

Is that still the case? Do they still pay higher than other stores... based on what I see in SoCal it looks to me like they are paying less than Costco, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target... their quality of employee is, at best, on par with what I see at the chain grocers who have very low union starting wage scales in place that are not competitive with many other retailer starting wages, and do not attract even close to the best quality of new hire...

Haven't seen an ad recently, so not certain, and of course as minimums have increased that has brought pay up at other places as well, so it may not be the case any longer.

The Aldi employees do not show any personality or enthusiasm. They definitely don't do anything to somehow make an engaging in-store experience when you go into the store, it feels like they want you out of there from the second you walked in, and you get no service; pay deposit for carts, long checkout line at their infamous ONE open register (even if the cashier is efficient), just a complete miserable experience. But at least the price is low-ish... I guess. I am actually surprised how much I dislike these stores in SoCal/AZ. I am very price sensitive and I want the best deal... but this store just doesn't appeal to me at all. Unbelievably bad service/employee interactions have ruined it for me.

A couple of those things are built in intentionally.

The "deposit" for the cart gets the customer to return it to the rack (which most times are only by the store, unlike other stores that have spots around the lot), thus no need to pay someone to collect them, and therefore that salary saved can go into offering lower prices.

The single register is a similar situation - they have others who CAN run registers, but they are around the store stocking or doing other tasks, until a line develops. Then, the cashier working is supposed to hit the buzzer and someone else (not sure if they do different codes to call for one or more people) will stop what they are doing and come up to help check people out. There again saving costs (not paying a cashier to stand there waiting and a separate person to stock shelves) which also allows prices to be a bit lower (though also why they were known to pay a bit more than other places, as the employee was staying busier the entire time, but still less than paying two people).

I suspect that because they are being more efficient ringing items up, they focus on that more and thus are less likely to chat with customers as other cashiers may do, more than it just being those who work there being less friendly.