Aldi has experienced yet another successful year, according to Paul Handley, Aldi Buying Director for Beer, Cider, Spirits and RTDs, with growth coming from both new and existing customers.
“Customers switching some or all of their spend to Aldi from other retailers accounted for 73 per cent of growth, while existing Aldi shoppers increasing their spend at Aldi accounted for 25 per cent of growth,” Handley said.
Additionally, Aldi was recognised by Roy Morgan and Canstar Blue for its high customer satisfaction, which has been reflected in high customer numbers.
“For the last three consecutive quarters we have seen both customer numbers, and number of visits by those customers to our stores, grow as a result,” says Handley, who attributes this customer satisfaction to Aldi’s focus on high quality but affordable products.
“We continue to have a single-minded focus on ensuring that customers can get the best value for money for their shop by working with our supplier partners to continue to deliver exceptional quality and value in the market – including a compelling range of excellent quality exclusive brand products,” he said.
With the current economic pressures on both retailers and consumers, Aldi has had to implement new strategies to continue delivering value to customers.
“With inflation on non-discretionary goods the highest it’s been in 30 years, there was a challenge to ensure we could continue to offer great products at great value prices. We focused on strategic initiatives across every segment of our business, including significant investment in new IT systems across the business, to ensure we could continue to offer a range of great value products within each major liquor segment,” Handley said.
Handley, who flagged lower-than-expected growth in the non-alcoholic, cider, and seltzer categories, explained the importance of correctly identifying when a category is mainstream enough to become part of the limited Aldi range.
“We will continue to use both the quarterly seasonal program and our special buys program to innovate and feature key products, particularly where they address an opportunity that may not be covered by our small, yet tightly curated, core range,” he said.
Ultimately, Aldi is looking to its existing customer base as the biggest opportunity for future growth.
“I see the main driver of growth for Aldi will be in converting our millions of existing customers to do more and more of their liquor shopping with Aldi by continuing to offer a small, tightly curated range of great value, great quality core range products in the convenient one-stop-shop format that we offer,” Handley said.
Aldi goes green
Aldi achieved several sustainability milestones in 2023, including becoming the first Australian supermarket to transition to 100 per cent renewable energy and being named Finders Green Supermarket of the Year in 2023. These steps will continue into 2024.
“Aldi has committed to reducing plastic packaging by 25 per cent and confirmed that 100 per cent of packaging of any Aldi branded products will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable and committed to sending zero waste to landfill by 2025,” Handley said.
This article originally appeared in the 2024 Leaders Forum issue of National Liquor News.