Supermarkets in Rolla, MO

“If you've been to Aldi's before, this review isn't going to help you out at all.

If you're still reading, I recommend that you go with someone that's been to Aldi's before on your first time or you may be a little frustrated with your experience.

Let's start with the fact that they hold shopping carts for ransom. If you want a shopping cart, you're going to either need a quarter to free a shopping cart from the cart prison, or a randomly generous fellow shopper who will do a secretive handoff to you outside the store. Now if you go with a Aldi fanatic, you're going to see
them whip out their dedicated Aldi quarter and act like they do this sort of thing all the time and it's totally normal.

Let's go inside the store now. If you have a cart, rejoice because this will make things a bit simpler, but either way, they do not have any bags, so again, you will either need to pre-plan and bring your own shopping bags (which seems a bit like bringing your own takehome box to the restaurant), or you're going to be hoping you can beat the other shoppers to the few good boxes in the empty box bin (if earlier shoppers haven't already left you high and dry). If they are out of good boxes and you didn't bring bags, you're going to wind up in this super awkward position where you have a bunch of random loose groceries that you now need to determine if you're going to present your vehicle is a grocery store shelf and try to nearly stack your haul like it was on the shelf, or if you throw caution and reason to the wind and just dump everything haphazardly into your car and deal with this mess at home.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Aldi has some normal-ish grocery store sections and then some odd sections where you may find a random assortment of items. Aldi fanatics will wax poetic about their Aldi finds, Aldi brands, and Aldi savings, but in my personal experience, everything is a mixed bag--except their lack of bags of course. Some things are cheaper at Aldi, but not everything. Same with flavor. We tried the Aldi brand of frozen seasoned burgers and compared to Walmart brand, the Aldi brand was gross. Other things from Aldi are really good, so you will just have to judge for yourself.

So let's finish with checkout. For some reason, checkout is also a bit odd and people can also get really weird around the checkout area. It may have something to do with trying to judge if you got enough and good enough boxes to pack your stuff in, and then when you're checking out, if you have some awkward shaped boxes, it's going to feel like you now have to play Tetris with your groceries at a boss level to pass the level and be granted exit from the store.”