'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the city; ALDI grocery was ready for a welcoming town meeting.
Detroit Lakes was cheery, and filled with downright glee, to meet the new grocer with roots based in Germany.
One company executive said the store's future looked bright because they are ready to enter this local grocery fight.
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On Dec. 18, ALDI grocery will be opening its doors to the public for the first time at 9 a.m., 14-months after a request was made from their neighbor, the Boys and Girls Club Thrift Store, to split their parking lot into a separate parcel, which paved the way for the new store .
ALDI Faribault Division Vice President Matt Lilla said, "We're incredibly excited to get that store open and we're even more excited to get it opened ahead of our grand opening in January, so the teams have been working very hard to make that happen, and we should have those doors open for customers to come check out the new store next Saturday."
ALDI grocery stores are set up differently than traditional groceries, he said, since they are purposely designed small, with five aisles and 12,000 square feet of selling space.
"We're a limited assortment grocer and that allows us to harness our buying power into a smaller number of items, get better prices and therefore pass the lower prices onto our customers with really incredible quality on each product because we can control more of the quality specifications with the 90 percent-plus private label items that we carry in our stores," said Lilla. "It's all the staple items that everybody is typically looking for in their normal, weekly grocery shopping trips, and people will find a really nice selection of fresh produce shipped to the store daily, as well as, fresh meat items and a lot of great cheeses, yogurt, fresh breads and all the other staple items you'd expect at another grocery store."
The store will also have a variety of seasonal items available on Dec. 18 for late Christmas stocking-stuffers in their ALDI Finds section , he said. That section will have new retail products rotated through the aisle every week and will be loosely tied to the seasons, like Christmas candies and apparel during the holidays and gardening equipment, and items, during the spring, he said.
"It's great prices on some, sometimes really unique items, deeply relevant items," he said. "A lot of our customers get really fired up about the awesome deals they find in the ALDI Finds section. There's even a group online that call themselves, The ALDI Nerds, and they blog about all of the incredible finds they can get at ALDI week-to-week and they share that with one another."
He added the ALDI Finds section is kind of like a "treasure hunt" because you never know what items will be there from week-to-week.
One ALDI sub-contractor working on-site in Detroit Lakes said they still have a fair amount of painting and other work at the store before it opens next Saturday, but believes they will meet their opening date.
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The store is still looking for new employees to add to their teams and anyone interested should visit the company's online hiring portal , he said.
And, as residents wake next Saturday with shopping needs renewed, three main grocers they'll see where there were only two.
Now, food should be more abundant in that merry lakeside town, Happy Christmas Detroit Lakes, ALDI will see you around.
- Send your local story tips to Michael at machterling@dlnewspapers.com and follow him on Twitter @machterling .
