My point was, they have stores in the US, and their stores in the US also do this. Which is unusual for US stores. Trader Joe's, for example (which is also owned by one of the Aldi companies) just has regular carts without the coin chain things.

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] FakeGreekGirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's not correct, actually. There were two brothers who inherited Aldi, and they did have a falling out over cigarettes, but they actually split the company in two - Aldi Nord (North) and Aldi Sud (South). As the names imply, they operate the Aldi stores in North and South Germany respectively.

In other countries, either Aldi Nord or Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores, but they do not directly compete with each other. The exception is the US, where Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores and Aldi Nord operates Trader Joe's (which the original owner of Aldi bought from Joe Coulombe in 1979).

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago

Huh, that sounds familiar too. Looks like I screwed this up last time I researched the history of Trader Joe’s for some post like this.