With today’s opening of ALDI, Silver Spring has one more grocery store.
The discount grocery store is open at 9440 Georgia Ave., near downtown Silver Spring.
Like other stores in the chain, the ALDI in Silver Spring will have about 11,000 square feet of space with a few aisles of food, according to Jeff Boehr, ALDI’s vice president for the Frederick division, which includes Montgomery County. As part of a straightforward cost-cutting approach, the Germany-based company often displays products stored in the boxes they came in and offers a small selection of brands—with many ALDI brand items.
ALDI has thousands of stores internationally and hundreds in the United States, including locations in Gaithersburg, Germantown, Takoma Park and on Bel Pre Road in Silver Spring.
The new Silver Spring store is less than a block from longtime local grocer Snider’s Super Foods. Terry Sweet, a manager at the independently owned store, previously told Bethesda Beat he was not worried about the competition given that Snider’s has a more customer service-based approach and has built up a following as a neighborhood store.
“As a joke, I’ve even threatened them that if you go in ALDI’s, you’re not allowed back in Snider’s,” he said at the time. “I’m going to stand out there with a camera.”
Boehr wrote in an email statement that the Georgia Avenue ALDI includes “more robust produce, dairy and bakery sections” compared to older ALDI locations and has an environmentally friendly design. He emphasized that the store is still focused on low prices.
“We want everyone to have high-quality food at affordable prices,” he wrote. “That’s why we do everything we do—from the size of our stores, to quality measures and private label product selection, we work to control costs so we can pass those savings on to our customers.”
ALDI is open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
