Discount journalism

With the death of one of the co-founders of the Aldi s retail empire, Karl Albrecht, aged 94.  One could palpably detect the snobbery going on as the BBC detailed his early beginnings, as if this confirmed their prejudices against the supermarket chain.  Titbits such as the re-use of pencil stubbs to do the accounts in the early days neglects the context in which Germans after the war were desperately poor - an American GI in Berlin recalled how he threw a cigarette butt in the gutter and several Berlin men pounced to seize possession of it.   As I've said before. 'discount' is used as a pejorative by journalists - a near-synonym for 'knock-off'.  And although the fruit and vegetables are generally the leftovers of what the bigger chains cannot sell (hence a shorter shelf-life) and repackaged at the warehouses, I was in Sainsbury's on Monday, perusing the fruit section and every single punnet of strawberries has at least one mouldy piece of fruit.
If cheapness were the only concern, I would not frequent Aldi often - it is the quality they can bring to their stores that is crucial.  To focus on just 2,000 ranges rather than the 10,000 that the bigger British-based supermarkets do, allows them to specialise in low prices and, largely, high quality. Karl Albrecht was convinced that — according to a company statement — “customers with a very limited income should also be able to eat and drink quality food. He saw this as his calling.”  The British middle-class have embraced the value-for-money ethos in the age of austerity and are likely to keep returning.