Over a year ago, back in April of 2020, we noticed that the Aldi weekly ad — which contains the grocer’s Aldi Finds and other assorted limited buys — had shrunk. Instead of the normal 4 pages or so of products, the ad only had two. At the time, the reason was straightforward: America was in the early days of a pandemic, and Aldi was cutting down on Aldi Finds to make more room for certain staple products, which at that time were in short supply.
By mid-summer, the weekly ad had by and large returned to its normal 3-4 pages, and, thankfully, the mad run on toilet paper had ended.
Fast forward to early August of 2021, and we’re seeing this:
This is the entire weekly ad for the week of August 8, 2021. It’s usually bigger.
So what’s going on?
Unlike in 2020, Aldi isn’t dealing with a run on staple supplies, and Aldi Finds appear to remain a popular option for the store, so we don’t have reason to believe they’re being phased out.
Instead, we suspect the reasons are different this time, and they’re all related to shipping delays. Like many retailers and grocers, Aldi has been hit hard by problems getting its non-food products into stores. It’s so bad that Aldi has, at the time of this post, created a page dedicated solely to listing what products might be running late.
Those delays create two big problems. One, they mean that products in the ad aren’t always showing up. When shoppers arrive expecting to see a product, they can’t find it. This is bad enough when Aldi superfans make a run on an Aldi Find, but it’s even worse when the product never shows up at all.
Two, those delays mean that the product randomly shows up later, usually out of the blue. Several times in the last couple of months I’ve walked into a store only to see a load of Aldi Finds that were supposed to show up weeks earlier now stacked on the shelves. For stores, it’s a pain because it makes shelf-stocking unpredictable. For customers, it means that there isn’t any advance notice of products they might be waiting for, even as they arrive looking for products that have been delayed.
I can only imagine the kind of havoc those product delays are creating for Aldi, whose well-oiled inventory machine depends on predictability and efficiency.
For that reason, cutting back on Aldi Finds, at least temporarily, makes sense. It lets the grocer make space for the stream of late Aldi Finds coming in, while avoiding the headache of customers coming in and not being able to find the things promised in the ad. It’s a reset, if you will.
Hopefully, as the supply chain works itself out, we’ll see the Aldi ad return to its normal size again.
I’ve read so many of your articles amd they’re great! But I must let you know you missed the Mark on this one. If you go to aldi .com you will see you will be able to select weekly ad or sneak peek
Looks like maybe you thought sneak peek is weekly ad it isn’t
It’s there every week with the weekly ad
My primary focus in this piece is about how many Aldi Finds are being put on shelves each week. The Sneak Peek is a list of most, if not all, of the upcoming Aldi Finds, while the extended ad includes other things, like discounted Regular Buys (known as Aldi Savers). In normal times, the Sneak Peek contains 4 pages of Aldi Finds, both non-food and food. The current Sneak Peak contains only 2 pages of Aldi Finds. If you click on the digital ad (This Week’s Aldi Finds or Upcoming Aldi Finds) you’ll see the same thing. Aldi just isn’t stocking many new Aldi Finds right now.
In the current extended ad, Aldi only has 1 of 4 pages devoted to Aldi Finds, where it normally would be more than that. It looks like Aldi is padding out the extended ad with Aldi Savers that are everyday Regular Buys. That’s probably smart on Aldi’s part in terms of putting together a full ad, but it’s also meant to maybe downplay the fact that there are fewer things coming to the middle aisle.
I just got Aldi’s email about the new weekly ad, and apparently they have an “online extended version” of the weekly ad on their website, which runs to 4 pages, each about twice as tall as the print version of the ad.
They do. You’ll notice, though, that Aldi Finds are a smaller proportion of that ad than normal. Three of the four pages in the online extended version are Aldi Savers, most (if not all) of which are discounted Regular Buys. Only one page is devoted to Aldi Finds.
There is a broken link in the supply chain. All one has to do is google, so very easy. We are still trying to play catch up to that tanker that blocked the canal, it hurt all countries, not just the USA. I’ve never seen people get so upset about not being able to find something in that ad. Get real folks and for heaven’s sake, educate yourself instead of trying to argue with Joshua. I swear, nobody will read even a short blurb and if they do their comprehension/retention is horrible. I’m beginning to think a lot of Aldi shoppers are stupid…
Well it might be time ….. like in Europa where you can order Aldi products / weekly specials like computers / that amazing mixer etc simply ONLINE ! With prices on Amazon very close to Aldi prices for those items … the hit and miss shopping does it not for me anymore and frankly I lost interest in their specials …
Thank you for the timely article! I had wondered exactly the same thing when I was looking at the ad. In fact, I wondered if I had only gotten on page when there should have been two. Thanks for the explanation and all of the other stories you do!