Deepening the local market: ALDI announces the addition of more than 50 fresh meat products, offering consumers high-quality products at low prices
ALDI, a fuller basket grocery offering best value-for-money products, recently expanded its fresh food offerings with over 50 new items, including meat, poultry, seafood and other categories. This brings the total number of fresh products to over 100, enriching the variety of goods to meet the daily needs of consumers. These products are not only cost-effective but also provide more high-quality, low-priced choices for local people's three meals a day. Meanwhile, for the fresh meat category, ALDI provides consumers with a "seven-day unsatisfactory return" service, ensuring they can confidently purchase high-quality, low-priced fresh meat. In addition, in line with the modern concept of healthy eating, ALDI has simultaneously launched a variety of new 0-added, 0-fat seasonings and compound seasonings, allowing consumers to shop at ALDI in a one-stop manner.
The number of fresh meat products has doubled to more than 100 to meet the needs of families in Shanghai
ALDI adheres to its original intention of serving local consumers by closely focusing on Shanghai's food culture, tastes, cooking habits, and scenarios. It has expanded its original fresh meat product line to include more local characteristics and is committed to offering 100% fresh meat. Furthermore, ALDI has introduced a “seven-day unsatisfactory return” service in the fresh meat and seafood categories. Within seven days from the date of receipt of goods, if there is any dissatisfaction with the product, consumers can enjoy the "seven days no reason to return" service, for the people of Shanghai to bring peace of mind and high quality choices.
（Left：Chilled shredded import beef ；Right：Chilled black pork ribs）
Deeply rooted in the local market demand, ALDI has found that chicken is a regular on the Shanghai families’ tables. Moreover, Shanghai people love to eat chicken, but also eat in various ways, such as boiled chicken, stir-fried chicken and chicken soup, etc. Given the different cooking methods, the key focus is on the 'fresh' taste of the chicken. Therefore, ALDI not only introduces Shimen chicken, which is richer in fat and suitable for soup, catering to Shanghai consumers' love for soup. At the same time, to meet the different cooking methods such as stewed, white cut, stir-fried, ALDI pre-cuts the poultry meat into appropriate sizes, easy for busy white-collar workers in the city and young families to cook quickly, without cutting and washing, without having to spend too much time and energy in processing the ingredients, and easily make a good color and taste of chicken delicacies.
（Hen soup）
As Shanghai is located along the Yangtze River and the coastal area, Shanghai residents are fond of all kinds of "fish". To meet this demand, ALDI has added a variety of new chilled seafood, such as chilled silverfish, chilled snail meat, etc., and also introduced high-quality Faroe Island salmon thick sliced. Each type of chilled seafood is carefully selected by ALDI's buying team after extensive visits and tastings of different varieties to offer consumers a high quality and price choice. Faroe island salmon thick sliced, for example, comes from the Danish Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. The waters here provide ideal conditions for the growth of salmon. Compared to other seas, Faroe salmon is more tender and flavorful, with smaller scales and fewer spines. It is also worth mentioning that the Faroe Islands have a strict policy on salmon farming, emphasizing low-density farming, which effectively reduces the incidence of disease in the fish population and ensures that each salmon has enough space to swim, resulting in firmer and stronger flesh. In addition, Faroe farmers adhere to the principle of not using antibiotics, which is a strong guarantee of the salmon's healthy quality. For consumers to fully experience the freshness of the salmon, ALDI not only chooses to deliver chilled raw materials by air, but also uses thick-cut processing technology to provide consumers with a richer taste experience and higher nutritional value.
（Left：Faroe island salmon thick sliced；Right：Chilled snail meat）
In addition, ALDI has also added a few pork products that are popular among Shanghai residents, including pork feet with tendons, pork hock, and pork offal. Among them, Offal products pose a relatively greater challenge for quality control, but to meet the daily needs of Shanghai residents, ALDI decided to add them to the product line after careful consideration. This decision is not a hasty one, but is based on ALDI's strict quality control system, which gives ALDI enough confidence to provide consumers with high-quality, safe and reliable pork offal products. For example, ALDI has established a sound veterinary drug control system, pig liver and other offal products will be quickly tested before leaving the factory to ensure that each batch of products are free of veterinary drug residues; at the same time, ALDI focuses on the freshness of products through the integration of slaughtering, packaging control, eliminating the road link from the slaughterhouse to the city processing center, and ensuring that the offal products can be freshly put on the shelves with an efficient management mode.
（Chilled pork feet with tendons）
The average price of black pork has been reduced by 40%, which is a benefit to the consumer
The new products not only come in a complete range, but also have a price advantage compared to products of the same quality on the market. Take the ES chilled chicken chopped as an example, the raw materials are strictly selected from grain-fed baby chicken, the meat is tender, the skin is smooth and suitable for stewing, and the price of a box of 600g is only RMB 19.9.
In recent years, the black pork has been favored by consumers because of its flavorful meat. However, due to the longer feeding and growth cycle and higher input costs, the price of black pork is often higher than that of ordinary white pork. ALDI has further expanded its black pork category with a full line of black pork products, all of which are grain-fed and carefully slow-grown, and are not only rich in intermuscular fat and meaty flavor, but also have low prices. The price of some black pork products has dropped by an average of 40% compared to the original price, including black pork minced meat for only 8.9 yuan, allowing consumers to enjoy both delicious and affordable food at the same time.
（Chilled black pork minced meat）
The secret of ALDI's ability to realize "high quality and low price" is that ALDI selects suppliers with better qualifications and mature industrial chain through comparison visits, establishes close cooperation with them, and deeply intervenes in all aspects of production and processing, which not only ensures that the quality of meat can be controlled, but also obtains more advantageous prices through the forms of direct sourcing from the source and large-scale collection. In addition, ALDI has been able to obtain more favorable prices through direct sourcing and large-scale purchasing.
In addition, ALDI's buying team has established a high-standard supplier pool, insisted on high-frequency price comparison within the pool of high-standard suppliers, introduced healthy competition to ensure quality and price, and also paid attention to the market prices of fresh meat and seafood categories every week, and ensured the low price of fresh food every day by comparing the price with similar products in the market on a weekly basis.
At the same time, ALDI also does not set any shopping threshold, since its opening has been insisting on not charging membership fees, with a sincere attitude to serve the surrounding neighborhood, aspire to be a real budget-friendly daily full basket grocery, so that all consumers who want to buy high-quality products can be the same in the ALDI to enjoy a cost-saving, effortless, and efficient shopping experience, and the small packaged products can also be low-priced, so that consumers no longer have to buy more servings than they need to get a deep discount, so they can get exactly what they need for three meals a day.
German Quality Control for good local products
Fresh meat and seafood categories have always been a highly competitive segment of the retail industry. Due to the unique nature of the category, fresh meat and seafood categories require exceptionally high standards of quality control, supply chain management, storage and transportation. As a result, the fresh meat and seafood categories have long been considered a tough nut to crack in the industry, with fresh meat being even more challenging.
ALDI's recent bold move into fresh meat and seafood segment is driven by two key factors: first, ALDI's unwavering commitment to serving local consumers; and second, the deep operational expertise and wisdom inherited from ALDI's century-old German brand DNA. This is further supported by a team of highly professional and efficient buyers with the keen insight of product managers. They benchmark themselves against retailers with prices below the market average and set the highest standards for quality. They understand the real needs of consumers and, in the pursuit of good quality, go to great lengths to source the best ingredients from the best origins and varieties with a rigorous attitude and unique vision.
(Fresh meat display in stores)
Sourcing quality ingredients is only half the battle. The real challenge in the fresh food industry is maintaining consistent quality throughout the complex supply chain. Drawing on established overseas supply chain management experience, ALDI has developed a "fast, precise and rigorous" supply chain management system. "Fast" is reflected in efficient transportation from pre-cooling, packaging and chilling to delivery, with each step executed quickly and accurately to ensure that fresh meat reaches consumers in optimal condition. "Precise" is achieved through real-time temperature monitoring during transport. ALDI equips its delivery trucks with TMS systems to monitor temperature and delivery time during the final leg of transportation from the warehouse to the store, ensuring that fresh meat remains within the ideal 0-4°C temperature range. If the temperature deviates, the system automatically triggers an alarm, and if the product is out of the cold chain for more than 30 minutes, it is rejected. The "rigorous" is evident in ALDI's careful selection of quality suppliers. Even existing partners are subjected to strict, comprehensive evaluation systems, including regular annual audits and spot checks.
As a budget-friendly daily full basket grocery that is closely connected to consumers' daily lives, ALDI consistently aligns its offerings with local needs and continually updates its product offerings to meet the diverse demands of local residents. In the future, ALDI will continue to introduce new products to be an affordable "community food market" that is close to the lives of neighbors and meets the needs of local consumers for three meals a day, providing a hassle-free and convenient shopping experience.
