How Does Kroger’s Ruler Foods Compare to Aldi?
If you live in the United States, there’s a good chance you know the name Kroger. Originally founded by Bernard Kroger in Cincinnati in 1883, the company today generates well over $100 billion a year in revenue, with locations in 35 states plus the District of Columbia. Kroger is the 17th largest company in the United States, the largest supermarket chain, and the second-largest general retailer, trailing only Walmart.
What the average shopper may not realize, though, is just how many supermarkets, pharmacies, and big box stores Kroger owns that don’t bear the name Kroger. If you happen to live in an area with a Fred Meyer, a Fry’s, a Smith’s, or a Harris Teeter, you know of one of Kroger’s many subsidiaries. Most of these are acquisitions: in other words, Kroger has bought out these companies over the years, adding to its massive portfolio.
Among its holdings, Kroger has purchased two low-inventory no-frills grocery chains. One is a store called Food 4 Less, which Kroger acquired in 1998 and which operates in California, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. The other is Ruler Foods, which Kroger purchased in 1999 and which operates in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. (In parts of the Chicagoland area, it’s not uncommon to see Kroger stores, Food 4 Less Stores, and Ruler Food stores within local driving distance from one another.)
What is Ruler Foods?
In 1863, a Swiss immigrant named John C. Groub, along with his wife, Elizabeth, opened a grocery store in Seymour, Indiana. Over the course of time, the company grew, establishing both larger supermarkets under the name JayC and a few smaller discount grocers named Ruler Foods. JayC was purchased by Kroger in the same 1999 deal that involved Ruler Foods, and Kroger subsequently decided to change the direction of Ruler Foods. Instead of just marketing it as a discount store, Kroger aimed to place Ruler Foods in areas where there wasn’t a Kroger. Today, there are around 50 Ruler Foods stores in the Midwest.
One of those areas is St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis has an interesting situation in that its local grocery landscape is dominated by regional chains Schnucks and Dierbergs. (Walmart also has a significant presence in the area, as does Aldi.) The nearest Kroger to downtown St. Louis is about an hour away. That lack of a Kroger in the immediate St. Louis area is why the company has opened nine different Ruler Foods in and around St. Louis.
We recently paid a visit to one of those St. Louis area Ruler Foods stores.
Aldi vs. Ruler Foods
If you’ve ever been to Aldi before, it’s pretty much impossible not to see the resemblance when you visit Ruler Foods. This is not an accident — in fact, Kroger has even brought on Aldi veterans to help shape Ruler Foods in the image of Aldi. Like Aldi, Ruler Foods is what is known in the grocery business as a “hard discounter,” or a grocery chain — like Aldi or Lidl — that aims to keep prices low through a no-frills experience.
We saw this from the moment we parked. The store is similar in size to Aldi (the average Aldi is about 17,000 square feet; Ruler Foods averages about 19,000 square feet) and the parking lot is about the same. Out on the parking lot, we spotted grocery carts linked together that required a quarter to unlock. That’s right — Kroger’s Ruler Foods uses the quarter system. Unlike Aldi, however, the carts were in covered cart corrals out in the parking lot, as opposed to immediately outside or inside the store.
Inside, we saw a store that was like Aldi in many ways. It’s definitely a compact experience, with just a few aisles. It’s also a store that, for the most part, has limited options for any given product. In other words, you don’t have seven kinds of ketchup to choose from like you might at Kroger.
Also like Aldi, Ruler Foods is mostly about private label brands rather than name brands. In the case of Ruler Foods, this means a lot of Kroger private labels, from milk to chips. Even the diapers were the Kroger Comforts line.
Not everything was Kroger brand, though. About 80% of Ruler Foods is private label, about 20% is not. We saw a noticeable minority of name brands like Miracle Whip, Coca-Cola, and Pringles. Aldi, meanwhile, is about 90% private label. That doesn’t seem like a big difference, but we could definitely see it — Ruler Foods clearly stocks more name brand food.
The Ruler Foods selection was generally good, although I found a few odd omissions. One of them: my personal favorite, dry roasted salted peanuts, was nowhere to be found in the Ruler Foods we visited.
Other sections of note at Ruler Foods included a small organic section and a slightly larger wine section. Neither of them, to us, appeared to be as big as Aldi’s respective sections, and neither was nearly as large as we see at, say, Trader Joe’s.
What about price? We’d been told Ruler Foods was a hard discounter, and it showed. Prices in the store were very competitive to Aldi, especially among the staple products. The eggs, for example, at Ruler Foods were as cheap as we’ve seen at Aldi, and they may currently be even a little cheaper.
There were a few differences between Aldi and Ruler Foods that we noticed. One was that Ruler Foods has only a very small seasonal section. Where Aldi really lives and breathes its rotating ALDI Find (Special Buy) lineup, everything in Ruler Foods that might qualify as a seasonal item or limited buy fit along one small part of one row and a couple of scattered places in the front and back. Ruler Foods is mostly about food, and what few non-food items it has are mostly essentials like paper products or toiletries.
A second difference: Ruler Foods stocked both some makeup as well as cigarettes, both of them near the checkout aisle. We’ve never seen Aldi sell makeup other than lip balm, and Aldi refuses to sell tobacco, a decision that is the reason Aldi split up as a company back in the 1960s.
A third difference: the checkout lines. Aldi is pretty fast, while Ruler Foods is … well, like most other stores. It was on the slower side. However, Ruler Foods is like Aldi in that you have to bag your own groceries, and you have to pay for bags if you need them. (Unlike Aldi, we didn’t see any cardboard boxes lying around inside Ruler Foods.)
One final note, regarding coupons and rewards. Aldi, famously, doesn’t have a rewards system and almost never does coupons. Ruler Foods, as a subsidiary of Kroger, does take the Kroger Plus Shopper’s Card if you happen to have one. On the other hand, Ruler Foods by and large does not take coupons, even Kroger branded ones.
Closing Thoughts:
As we walked out of Ruler Foods, we were definitely struck by both the store’s eerie familiarity but also its distinctives. Kroger is shamelessly channeling its inner Aldi with the store, but it is also doing just a few things differently, too, especially with regard to favoring a few more national brands and less in the area of limited buy items. That makes Ruler Foods maybe a little bit less exciting than Aldi — or Trader Joe’s, for that matter — but it definitely competes on price. It will be interesting to see how much Kroger expands the Ruler Foods brand down the line.
Ruler Foods didn’t impress us enough to sell us on becoming repeat customers, but it did illustrate another example of just how heated the grocery wars are right now, especially when it comes to hard discounters.
I visited the same store a year or so ago when I was in STL. Had the same conclusion. It lacks the magic Aldi and Lidl have. But not bad if nearby and you need staples.
I made my first visit to Ruler Foods in November of 2019 and have been a regular ever since. I prefer it over Aldi. The only thing I dislike about Ruler is that the produce section needs to be improved in both quality and selection. It has improved some since I first started going seven months ago but has a way to go. I go to the store in Collinsville Il and it is quite a bit larger than Aldi. They have a better meat selection than Aldi and a much larger selection of frozen foods. I still go to both stores but mainly Aldi for the better produce and Ruler for most of the rest of my food items. The coronavirus has thrown a wrench into all retailers not being able to get everything they need to stay stocked up but long before the coronavirus, Aldi was doing a very poor job at their Glen Carbon, IL store when it came to running out of items and they would be out for weeks many times. Very frustrating to say the least. Ruler seems to do a far superior job of keeping the store stocked. As far as price, Aldi is a bit cheaper on some things and Ruler a bit cheaper on others so price is a wash in my book. I know the articles says Ruler just has a few aisles like Aldi but not the store in Collinsville. It is much larger, maybe due to that’s what was available to lease but it does leave room for more selection at Ruler and wider aisles even after the Aldi remodeling that widen the aisles a bit.
I shop both stores, Ruler and Aldi. The ruler I shop is on S. Grand in South ST. Louis. It needs help. The produce display is awful along with the veggies. I wish they would not have so much processed foods and bring in more fresh items. The store needs to be updated and they seem not to be able to keep good employees. Since Ruler opened they have only two employees that are still there. The turn around is a revolving door which makes for bad Customer service. Customers had to bad mouth the property (on Nextdoor) just to get the parking lights fixed to feel safe to go shopping in the evening. if Ruler would invest some cash in that store it could be the gem of the area. It is located within three blocks of homes that sell for 500k and up. ppl want a clean, stocked and safe place to shop with good parking and good quality products. Covid-19 has helped the store because it is much cleaner, but that should of been the case before . All grocery stores should be clean no matter virus or not.
Ruler is like Aldi was in the 80s and 90s, no frills groceries on the cheap. Also, they do take kroger coupons. I use the Kroger app and clip digital coupons every week and scan the bar code at the register. In a big grocery trip, I’ve saved up to $30 using Kroger coupons.
Both stores need self-check lanes! Most times I go to the store I only need half a dozen things, and end up in line behind someone with a cart loaded to the top. Some people claim to hate self-checks but I find I’m checked out and gone and probably back home before I’d have reached the checker in a regular checker lane.
Thanks for this article. I was trying to figure out if we should try ruler foods. I love Aldi but they just don’t have everything we need so we end up going back to Kroger anyway, which is hard on gas for us so we rarely shop there even those it’s cheaper. Kroger is just getting too expensive so I was trying to find an alternative and where we can also use our wic. After this article, I’ll probably steer clear of this place unless we happen to be near it while casually out and about. I might check out Trader Joe’s though. I’ve been wanting to go in there.