“Do you believe in miracles?” — sportscaster Al Michaels, 1980
For years, our staff has written Aldi wish lists — things we wished the grocer carried but did not. In our most recent wish list, I led off my selections with this:
Premade sandwiches and wraps. I know it’s not the easiest for a grocer like Aldi to serve up fresh foods, especially ones with a short shelf life. If it goes bad before walking out the door, it’s a loss. And yet fresh premade foods do have a market, especially in a world where people never have enough time. Trader Joe’s manages to sell some great sandwiches and wraps, and I’d love to see Aldi experiment with them, even as Aldi Finds.
I always hold those wishes loosely. We’ve wished for many things for Aldi to sell over the years that have never come to pass. I could always hope for premade stuff, but I don’t know that I had much hope it would happen.
Then, not long ago, fellow AR writer Rachael messaged me with this:
!["Aldi has wraps! Just like you asked for on your wish list." "Found them this morning in the regular by [sic] deli section"](https://www.aldireviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-17-173857.png)
Easiest decision to review ever.
Park Street Deli Style Turkey Club Wrap and Park Street Deli Style Italian-Style Wrap are both Aldi Regular Buys. That means you can find them in stores every day. (That’s right — they’re not an Aldi Find, but an everyday buy.) You can find them in a mixed case in the store’s refrigerated section near the meats and cheeses. They come in sealed plastic containers and cost $4.69 each. That’s not far off the price Trader Joe’s sells wraps for.
We’ll delve into specifics on each of them in a moment, but one thing you should know out of the gate: neither of these have any vegetables in them. No tomatoes and no lettuce, for instance. We assume this is for one reason: they keep longer that way. A meat, cheese, and starch wrap can sit on the refrigerated shelf for a lot longer than one that’s got produce in it. Any grocer hates food perishing on the shelf, but given Aldi’s limited shelf space I’m sure this is a consideration. The wraps we saw had expiration dates on them about a month in the future.
For me personally, having fresh wraps at Aldi in exchange for no veggies is a tradeoff I can live with. If I want extras, I can easily add them in myself. Other shoppers may disagree.
Let’s look closer at the two offerings.
Turkey Club Wrap
The package boasts that this product has “oven roasted white turkey, smoked ham, bacon, cheddar cheese & ranch dressing rolled in flour tortillas.” The package says it weighs 8 ounces.
I really liked this wrap. It was meaty and cheesy and the flavors blended together just right. The Ranch dressing added depth to the flavor, too. I actually thought it was more meaty and cheesy than its Trader Joe’s counterpart, which boasts veggies but also felt lacking in the meat department. Where the TJ’s wrap sometimes felt like mostly tortilla, the Aldi version did better. We ended up getting two of these, and while one quarter of one of the wraps was only half-full of meat and cheese, for the most part we felt like the inner ingredients were evenly distributed.
Nutritionally, each wrap package has 580 calories, 24 grams of fat (31% of the recommended daily value), 10 grams of saturated fat (50%), 1,830 milligrams of sodium (80%), and 62 grams of carbs (23%). There are 2 grams of dietary fiber and 27 grams of protein. The ingredients list is long and there are allergen warnings for egg, milk, soy, and wheat.
Turkey Club Wrap: nutrition information and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)
Italian-Style Wrap
The package describes this as “salami, spicy ham, provolone, pepperoni & Italian dressing rolled in whole wheat tortillas.” That represents a bit of a contrast from the turkey club wrap, both with the whole wheat tortilla and what’s inside of it. This wrap clocks in at 8.2 ounces, a bit heavier than the turkey club.
Our family liked this wrap, too. The meats and cheeses had plenty of flavor and the dressing complemented it nicely. As with the turkey club, it has a nice proportion of meats and cheeses to tortilla that keeps it from being too bready. One note about this wrap is that it does have some pepper kick, so if you’re not a fan of that you may not like this one quite as much.
Nutritionally, the wrap has 660 calories, 37 grams of fat (47% of a recommended daily value), 15 grams of saturated fat (75%), 1,990 milligrams of sodium (87%), and 54 grams of carbs (20%). There are also 8 grams of dietary fiber — fairly high, in our view — and 27 grams of protein. This ingredients list, like the other wrap, is lengthy. Milk, soy, and wheat are listed as allergens.
Italian-style wrap: nutrition and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)
The Verdict:
From a taste perspective, we’re suitably impressed with these Aldi wraps. They’ve got good flavor and each of them does the job well in its own distinct way. The turkey club was our favorite, but the Italian-style wrap is fun, too, especially if you don’t mind some kick. While you could make your own wraps for less, we think the price point is fair considering that you’re getting something premade.
While we like them, we nevertheless think there are a couple of considerations with these. One, they don’t come with produce toppings like lettuce or tomato, and while this helps to give them a longer shelf life, it does mean you’ll need to add your own veggies if that’s your style. Two, both of these wraps are high in, among other things, fat and sodium, and that may make them more of an in-moderation food for some consumers.
Still, overall these represent a promising start in an area we’ve felt like Aldi has sorely needed to lean into. We hope it paves the way for other premade items in store down the road.
