Last night at the 2018 MUFSO conference gala awards dinner in Dallas, the Aldi supermarket chain was presented with the award for Supermarket News’ Retailer of the Year.
Scott Patton, vice president of corporate buying, accepted the honor for Aldi, thanking the company’s employees and adding, “We take pride in delivering a very unique shopping experience.”
The retailer, whose U.S. headquarters is in Batavia, Ill., offers a unique, curated selection of high-quality private label products in a compact store format and attracts customers with hard-to-match, everyday-low prices and a simplified shopping experience that eschews promotional frills.
Now with about 1,800 locations in 35 states, privately held Aldi is more than a year into a $5.3 billion, five-year expansion program that will enlarge its store base by almost 50% and upgrade most of its stores. Dovetailing with that initiative is a major product expansion in which 20% of items in every store will be new versus a year ago.
The award was presented by Becky Schilling, editor-in-chief of Supermarket News, and Laura Viscusi, vice president/group publisher for the NRN Restaurant and Food Group. MUFSO, a leading restaurant operators’ event, is presented by Nation’s Restaurant News, a sister brand to Supermarket News. As Schilling pointed out in her remarks, the inclusion of a food retailer at the event’s awards ceremony was “blazing new trails at MUFSO.”
