When Mary Porter walked into Manhattan’s newest Aldi store hunting for bargains, the 79-year-old long-time resident found what she considered a retail miracle: a $4 jar of almond butter that costs $22 in her own neighbourhood. “Aldi has the reputation for being inexpensive, so I thought I would come and check it out, and by golly, it is amazing,” she told the BBC, marvelling at the savings alongside the fresh spinach and organic raspberries filling her basket.
The store is tucked away in an underground car park beneath The Ellery, a luxury apartment complex where the cheapest rent starts at nearly $5,000 a month. The building’s own website omits the grocer from its curated neighbourhood guide, highlighting pricier options like Whole Foods and Brooklyn Fare instead. But step past the luxury façade into the basement, and the quiet disappears: even on an early Tuesday afternoon in July, the brightly lit space buzzes with a lunchtime crowd navigating narrow aisles with oversized canvas bags.
“Aldi’s $4 almond butter in Manhattan reveals its $9bn US expansion, mirroring its UK disruption of the grocery market.”
Porter’s discovery is part of Aldi’s $9bn US expansion plan to add 800 new stores over five years, specifically targeting dense urban hubs like Manhattan. The German supermarket, which first entered the US in 1976, has grown its footprint to nearly 2,800 storefronts. The aggressive real estate blitz signals a bold shift for a brand traditionally associated with suburban strip malls and lower-end consumers.
Incumbent US grocers may look with some concern at the insurgency Aldi pulled off in the UK after entering the market in the 1990s. Alongside fellow German supermarket Lidl, Aldi picked up huge swathes of the market by offering cheaper prices for high-quality goods. The traditional “big four” grocers – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – were slow to respond, allowing the challengers to gradually pick off their shoppers. Today, Aldi is the UK’s fourth biggest grocer, commanding 10.8% of the market. Its rapid growth has been aided by easing perceptions of it as a strictly lower-cost grocer, and the cost of living crisis of the 2020s further fuelled its ascent.
However, while Aldi is ascending the ranks of American grocery consciousness, it holds just 2.9% of the US grocery pie, while Walmart controls about 20%. Analysts say that staying smaller…