aldi

Once the underdog Brits loved to root for, Aldi is facing up to the inevitable backlash of doing too well, too fast. Since the discounter leapfrogged Waitrose to become the UK’s sixth-biggest supermarket in April, journalists have been sharpening their claws. And on Monday came Dispatches: Aldi’s Supermarket Secrets (Channel 4, 8pm, 9 November).

Going undercover in two stores, the investigative team focused (in much the same way as Panorama’s undercover reporters did at Amazon) on the ‘Aldi way’ of fewer staff working at high productivity. Anonymous employee rants on online forums and testimony from disgruntled former staff member Yohan formed the basis of its suspicions.

And once safely smuggled in, the two reporters did find material to feed their misgivings. The pair were told to arrive 15 minutes early unpaid each shift to carry out ‘priority walks’, tight time targets meant bread was hurled on to shelves, and rotting fruit & veg was left on sale. More significantly, fire exits were blocked and staff clambered across glass chillers only to fall straight through.

It was hardly the damning exposé Dispatches had clearly been gunning for though, with Aldi able to blame individual store managers and rogue staff in a pair of its 600 stores. And any business that has mushroomed at the breakneck speed of Aldi knows some growing pains are inevitable.

But if the grocer got away with it this time, it should count it as a warning. There’ll be plenty now snapping at C4’s heels to put Aldi in its place.

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