You know it, you love it– Aldi. Everyone’s favorite discount grocer is also a bit mysterious. You probably know the stores got started in Europe, but how? When?
12 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About ALDI:
1. Aldi was founded in Germany in 1946 by Karl and Theo Albrecht who took over their mother’s store.
2. The brothers’ parents also came from merchant families, with their mother opening a store in 1914.
3. The brothers introduced Aldi as the company name in 1962.
4. Aldi is a symbolic abbreviation for Albrecht Diskont (you guessed it ‘diskont’ is German for ‘discount’).
5. The brothers split the company into two parts in 1960– Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud over a dispute over whether or not they should sell cigarettes.
6. Aldi opened its first store outside of Germany in the Netherlands in 1973.
7. Aldi currently has over 10,000 stores in 20 countries.
8. Aldi’s custom-branded products fall under the brands Grandessa, Happy Farms, Millville, Simply Nature, and Fit & Active.
9. Aldi is the largest wine retailer in Germany.
10. In 1979, Theo Albrecht bought Trader Joe’s, which originally opened in California in 1967.
11. Trader Joe’s is named after its founder, Joe Coulumbe.
12. The brothers retired as CEOs in 1993.