The unexpected product selling out in Aldi during the pandemic
While Aldi customers were panic buying toilet paper, rice and pasta, another surprising item has also been snatched up amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia on Friday, customer service director Adrian Christie said dog treats were among the most popular items shoppers were trying to get their hands on.
“I’m worried about the health of Australians’ animals,” he joked.
“So if you are at home and do have a pet there stop feeding them treats too often if you’re spending more time with them.”
Mr Christie said they saw a number of products flying off shelves amid the pandemic, including items like coffee as people were spending more time at home and not visiting cafes as often.
“Other items like flour sold particularly well and standard stuff like sugar and cleaning products,” he said.
“I think for me dog treats stood out, it’s nice to see people are looking after their animals at the moment.”
Mr Christie said some high demand products, like toilet paper, came as a shock to the supply chain.
“There’s a bit of a back story with toilet paper. There were all sorts of different varieties – 36 packs, 24 packs and 12 packs – so we had to focus on how do we actually make sure the production line is delivering one product.
“If you just have a 24 pack you can get more of them off the production line.”
With paper towel flying off the shelves and people concerned it was being used in the toilet by those who couldn’t purchase toilet paper, Mr Christie said it was not the case.
“They were produced on the same supply chain and factory line – one had to be prioritised over the other.
“This week we’ve shipped more than seven million toilet rolls into our stores so we are back in stock with toilet paper.”
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With pasta also in demand, Aldi made the decision to limit its varieties so it could stock shelves with more product.
“There’s a lot of different varieties and we all like those different varieties but we made a decision at Aldi we’ll actually keep it focused, so went to the supplier and said there are three things we’re going to do – spaghetti, penne and spirals – so we focused on those three packages of pasta to get them back on shelves for customers,” Mr Christie said.
Innovative change returns products to shelves
Cleaning products have also been in high demand with parts as simple as lids hard for suppliers to get their hands on to package the item.
“We had to change some lids. [Suppliers] said, ‘we can’t produce this with a green lid anymore we can only get red lids’.
“We authorised them obviously so people could get their washing liquid,” he said.
Mr Christie said shoppers could only buy two units of flour, dry rice and hand sanitiser but hoped the restrictions would be lifted in the coming weeks.
“But the priority in having those restrictions is so when you shop you can actually get some items,” he said.
“We want to make sure through the day you can get access to items. It’s about fairness for everyone but we hope to lift those shortly.”
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