Bargain grocer Aldi seizes the moment in an era of higher prices

The discount grocery chain Aldi is expanding rapidly and plans to open more than 180 U.S. stores this year as more Americans skip nights out at restaurants and cook at home due to anxiety over the nation's economy.

The chain, with U.S. operations based outside Chicago, went on an expansion tear soon after inflation began to spike in 2021 and opened a record number of new stores last year.

Food inflation has slowed, but it was still up 2.4 percent last year, according to U.S. data, and has soared about 25 percent since the pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.S. Labor Department said that grocery prices jumped 0.7 percent in December from the previous month, and that price hikes accelerated faster in 2025 than they had in the previous two years.

Last month beef and veal prices climbed 1 percent from November, and are up 16.4 percent from last year. Coffee prices increased 1.9 percent in a month and are up almost 20 percent over a year. Egg prices dropped 8.2 percent in December, continuing to fall after surging last year after a bird flu outbreak.

President Donald Trump's message on inflation during his 2024 presidential campaign and his promises to lower prices immediately if elected have rankled some Americans who feel it is not a priority for the administration after all.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries and electricity in recent months, according to a survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Aldi has sought to snap up market share as more families trade down, meaning they are changing where they shop to cut costs.

Americans are dropping trusted name brands for cheaper store-brands and swapping out the places they've shopped for years in favor of discount or thrift stores. It's been a boon for national bargain store chains such as Dollar General and Dollar Tree.

That shift had begun before Trump’s trade war began, but appears to have accelerated over the past year.

Aldi said in 2024 that it planned to open 800 new stores by 2028 as inflation worries spread. It announced plans to open a record 225 locations last year in the U.S.

The chain has seven stores in the Corridor — three in Cedar Rapids, one in Marion and one each in Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty.

Aldi said Tuesday that it will add new distribution centers in Florida, Arizona and Colorado and still is committed to investing $9 billion in the U.S. through 2028. The company also is looking to open more than 50 stores in Colorado within the next five years and plans to double its Las Vegas store count by 2030.

The expansion will give Aldi almost 2,800 stores by the end of the year, which gets it closer to its goal of 3,200 stores by 2028.

Traditional grocers are under pressure from bargain chains, massive retailers like Walmart and also relatively new players like Amazon.com. In December, Amazon said same-day perishable grocery delivery had been expanded to more than 2,300 cities and towns, and the online giant said it has more expansion plans for this year.