Aldi Reviewer Presents: The 2025 AR Awards
Hello, and welcome to the 7th Annual AR Awards! These awards, chosen by our staff, highlight the good, bad, and ugly of everything Aldi-related (with a bit of Trader Joe’s sprinkled in) that we covered during this past year.
Below, you’ll see several categories and the nominees and winners in each.
(Past awards: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019)
Before we go on, two things:
- One, when it came to product awards, we only considered nominees among the products we covered in some way during the last 12 months. If we didn’t cover the product during that time, we didn’t consider it. That means there could be legitimately good candidates that we just didn’t get around to covering.
- Two, lists like this are always subjective, which means one person’s favorite might be another person’s most hated. If you think there is a deserving product, feel free to let us know (politely) in the comments!
With that said, let’s begin.
Regular Buy / Seasonal Favorite of the Year
Winner: Little Salad Bar Caesar Salad Kit (Regular Buy)
Aldi continues to sell some great everyday products, which makes this a tough category to pick. Our honorable mentions this year included an excellent sauce for fried rice, a sublime dessert bread, and ground turkey that has become a staple in our house. Our winner this year is a Caesar salad kit that is easy to assemble and is always a hit at the dinner table. We like this kit better than its brand-name counterparts.
Honorable Mention:
- Burman’s Japanese Style Asian Barbecue Sauce (Seasonal Item)
- L’Oven Fresh Pains au Chocolat (Regular Buy)
- Kirkwood Fresh Ground Turkey (Regular Buy)
Aldi Find of the Year
Winner: Ambiano Classic Stand Mixer (Aldi Find)
We saw some solid Aldi Finds this year, including some terrific tech, a delightful pizza pack, and a second round of Disney gear that improved on last year’s Surprise of the Year. Our winner, though, was a most humble appliance: a practical, powerful stand mixer. We were impressed by how the mixer did everything we needed it to, and we continue to use it when we bake and cook.
Honorable Mention:
- Mama Cozzi’s 3 Pack Cheese Pizza (Aldi Find)
- Bauhn Wireless MagCharge Power Bank Bundle (Aldi Find)
- Aldi 2025 Disney Gear (Aldi Find)
Trader Joe’s Product of the Year
Winner: Trader Joe’s Organic Tart Cherry Fruit Spread
Every year, Trader Joe’s manages to offer plenty to catch our eye, enough that this is never an easy pick. Our favorite for this year is a sweet and tart fruit spread that hits differently than your standard fruit jam or spread. It pairs nicely with toast or whatever else you want to do with a spread.
Honorable Mention:
- Trader Joe’s White Cheddar Popcorn
- Trader Joe’s Organic Roasted Herbal Tea Coffee Alternative
- Trader Joe’s Chicken Mole
Surprise of the Year
Winner: Aldi Launches Massive Rebranding of its Private Label Food Packaging (News Story)
We’ve been writing about Aldi for nearly a decade now, so it’s not easy to surprise us anymore. Still, Aldi managed to shake things up, including the company’s decision to shut down its Facebook Group, Aldi Insiders. The big surprise, though, was the announcement of a large rebranding effort of the store’s private labels, which will see longtime brands consolidated into other labels, along with other various changes to product packaging. Longtime names like Baker’s Corner and Dakota’s Pride will be no more. Instead, shoppers will see some products folded into other existing brands, while other products will simply have an Aldi label. And red bag chicken? It’s going to actually be called Red Bag Chicken now.
Honorable Mention:
- Aldi Announces Last Day for Aldi Insiders Facebook Group (News Story)
- Disney Character Candle (Aldi Find)
- Emporium Selection 12 Days of Cheese Advent Calendar (Aldi Find)
Disappointment of the Year
Winner: The New Aldi Ad Format (News Story)
In another year, a product that was dead on arrival might have been our winner, and in fact that’s what headlined our disappointment category a few years ago. We had another dud this year in an inoperable gravity pepper shaker, but that was trumped by an Aldi ad overhaul that was met by near-universal criticism from Aldi shoppers. The grocer replaced an old but highly functional experience with a new ad format designed to get more online sales conversions. The new ad jettisoned some of the best parts of the Aldi ad experience, including detailed product specs.
While Aldi has made some incremental improvements to the ad, including adding some product information to certain products, as of the end of 2025 the ad preview remains a clunky, frustrating experience.
Honorable Mention:
- Ambiano Electric Gravity Salt and Pepper Mill Set (Aldi Find)
- Adventuridge Tabletop Smokeless Fire Pit (Aldi Find)
- Fremont Fish Market Crab Cakes (Aldi Find)
News Story of the Year
Winner: Trader Joe’s Accused of Questionable Business Practices
Aldi growth — including into a new major metro area — was a big news story in 2025, as was the grocer’s decision to quietly scrub DEI language from its websites. The story that really grabbed our attention, though, was a massive three-part exposé by website Fast Company into alleged questionable business practices by Aldi’s distant cousin, Trader Joe’s. We won’t get into all the allegations here, but Fast Company’s accusations stretched into seemingly every corner of the TJ’s operation. We’ll leave it to readers to decide what to make of all of it.
Honorable Mention:
- Aldi to Open More Than 225 Stores in 2025
- Aldi Removes DEI Pages from Its Websites
- Aldi Has Arrived in Las Vegas
Thoughts? Reactions? Lists of your own? Feel free to let us know in the comments!
I used to love the bagged Caesar salad but the dressing changed and not for the better IMHO. Happy New Year!
We haven’t noticed any major changes to the dressing. We’ll keep an eye out, though.
It didn’t surprise me that the electric pepper mill did not work. I use a lot of pepper in my potato salad and with age it’s getting harder to hand grind. (Pre-ground does not taste the same.) To date, I have not found a single electric pepper grinder that actually works. Thanks for the honest review. It avoided me from trying it for myself.
The Aldi upcoming ads format is still terrible and not at all user-friendly.
The ad format is so bad I don’t even use it anymore. I know I might miss some specials in the process; however, that is not worth a headache after attempting to navigate the ad.