The Aldi Quarter Keychain, also known as the Aldi Quarter Keeper, is one of the most practical Aldi Finds that comes up a few times a year. Having a quarter is almost essential for shopping at Aldi because it’s how you access a shopping cart.
A question we ran across in our research was “Do you have to bring a quarter to Aldi?”.
You need to bring a quarter. ALDI keeps the costs low by being pretty no frills and by not needing an excessive amount of employees to operate. Unlike some other supermarkets, there’s no one in the parking lot getting your cart and bringing it back to the cage. That’s on you.
(Don’t worry; you get it back when you leave.) It’s part of the system Aldi has devised so they don’t need to hire extra employees to return carts, and it ultimately saves you money. When you arrive, you simply slide a quarter into a slot on top of a cart, which releases the cart to you from the rest of the carts.
It’s perfectly normal for another customer to offer to take the cart off your hands — it’ll save you from walking all the way back up to the store, after all. But at Aldi, they’ll usually have their quarter in hand, and they’ll trade you for it.
Why does aldi charge a quarter for a cart?
Aldi explains, via its website, that the measure helps save customers money. The fee is in place to help keep prices low, and to keep carts from cluttering the parking lot. If a customer doesn’t have a quarter, they can ask inside, and one is provided.
The cart rental system is all part of ALDI’s business plan to keep prices low. Making customers put down a small deposit to unlock a shopping cart keeps them from being left around the parking lot and potentially scratching or denting cars.
Another thing we asked ourselves was; why does Aldi charge a deposit to unlock shopping carts?
One source claimed that making customers put down a small deposit to unlock a shopping cart keeps them from being left around the parking lot and potentially scratching or denting cars. It also keeps ALDI from having to send an employee out to collect them all day.
Why do they have shopping carts in Aldi?
The Aldi shopping cart system also speaks to an important value in German culture – self reliance. As you arrive at Aldi, you may have someone in the parking lot approach you with an empty cart. It seems to be customary to offer that person your quarter you had out to get a cart from the cart corral.
When people return their own carts, Aldi doesn’t need to pay someone to spend hours each day going around the parking lot collecting the stray carts you see at almost every other grocery store. It’s a win-win for customers, too.
How do you unlock a shopping cart at Aldi?
To unlock a cart, customers have to insert a quarter, and this deposit ensures shoppers return their cart to the corral to get their quarter back. Do you have to bring your own bags to ALDI?
Why is Aldi so cheap?
ALDI keeps the costs low by being pretty no frills and by not needing an excessive amount of employees to operate. Unlike some other supermarkets, there’s no one in the parking lot getting your cart and bringing it back to the cage. That’s on you. And they’ll get you to do it by making you leave a quarter deposit for a cart.
Here are some more reasons why ALDI’s groceries are so cheap. If you don’t want to deal with unlocking the cart, find a customer who is almost finished with theirs and give your quarter to them in exchange for their cart. Since they just scored some pretty good deals on their groceries, they’ll probably be happy to oblige.