Here’s the Insider Term Aldi Uses to Describe Its Everyday Products

When we launched Aldi Reviewer back in 2016, one of the first things we did was to set about creating categories for the three specific kinds of products Aldi sells. First, there were the limited buys that were only in stores for a short time — Aldi US initially called these Special Buys but later shifted to the term Aldi Finds. Then, there were the seasonal items that would stick around for certain parts of the year — Aldi called those Seasonal Items but later evolved them into Seasonal Favorites.

That leaves the everyday stuff. You know, the things that Aldi always has. Milk, eggs, bread, condiments, cheese, toilet paper, all of that. Aldi doesn’t call those things anything in particular, at least not in stores.

That left us in a bit of a pickle. After all, our goal is to use the terminology Aldi uses when we can, even when the words change. But here, there didn’t seem to be an official term.

For that reason, we settled on Regular Buys. It’s a variation on Special Buy, and a term one of our writers vaguely thought they’d heard somewhere else. That’s hardly authoritative, but since we needed a quick and easy term to describe the products Aldi always sells, it’s what we’ve used ever since.

Recently, however, an insider in the grocery industry kindly tipped us off to Aldi’s house term for these everyday buys. And it turns out the answer is hiding in plain sight, right on Aldi’s corporate page.

And that term?

Core range.

Here’s what Aldi US’s site says in its frequently asked questions to potential food and nonfood suppliers:

Q. What is a core range item?

A. A core range item is an item that we sell everyday in our stores.

Core range appears to be an insider term used by stores inside and outside of the grocery industry, including by the companies that supply those stores. While we’ve never seen Aldi US use the term with the public, Aldi UK has, and customers in Aldi Ireland also appear to be familiar with it.

Because it’s an industry term rather than a branded term, Aldi doesn’t treat it as a proper noun. The grocer does not capitalize core range the way it does Aldi Finds (which the company stylizes as “ALDI Finds”) or even Seasonal Favorites.

At the time of this post, we’re on the fence as to whether this is a term we’ll use going forward with our product reviews, since Aldi US doesn’t currently seem predisposed to use it with anyone but its suppliers. Even so, it’s interesting to know what Aldi calls its staple products.

So the next time you go into Aldi and pick up that roll of paper towels or that bag of produce, you can say to yourself, “This is part of the Aldi core range!” Or maybe not.