Aldi’s 2nd Centre County location set to open Thursday. Here’s a peek inside — and what to expect
The shelves are stocked, the floors mopped and the freezers full — so, come 9 a.m. Thursday, Centre County’s newest Aldi at 780 Benner Pike will officially open its doors.
The new College Township location is the county’s second Aldi, as the first opened just five months prior in Patton Township, about 7 miles away. The new stores are part of an aggressive campaign by Aldi to become the country’s third-largest grocery chain by the end of the year.
The Benner Pike store — one of more than 2,100 in the U.S. — should be a particularly welcome sight for local residents, as it fills a gap left by the 2019 closure of Giant Food Store’s East College Avenue branch.
“We have served the Johnstown-Altoona area for more than 20 years and look forward to continuing to offer State College residents high-quality, fresh foods and low prices ...,” Aldi Saxonburg Division Vice President JR Perry said in a written statement.
The 19,221-square-foot Aldi is about 6% smaller than its first Centre County location, but customers might have difficulty telling the difference in the similar setups. The second store boasts five checkout lanes, both stores will remain open every day from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and both locations say more 90% of their products are Aldi-exclusive brands.
New customers might be a bit unfamiliar with the setup of the discount grocery chain. Grocery bags are not freely provided at checkout — Aldi asks people to bring reusable bags or their own plastic bags for environmental and cost-saving reasons — and the store instead offers recycled paper bags and reusable totes for sale, ranging from 7 cents apiece to $1.99. Shopping carts also operate on a “quarter system,” meaning you must insert a quarter into a mechanism on the cart handle to use it. When done shopping, the quarter is returned when the cart is returned. (That way, Aldi says, it doesn’t have to hire extra staff to collect grocery carts.)
According to Perry, the new location will employee 15 to 20 people.
The idea for Aldi’s second Centre County location, at the former Krentzman Supply site, was made public in the summer of 2020. In February 2021, College Township formally approved Aldi’s plan for another store. And, now in March 2022, the store is finally set to open.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 8:15 a.m. Thursday, ahead of the doors opening for the first time 45 minutes later.
According to Aldi’s corporate website, the first-ever store opened in 1961 in Germany before expanding to the U.S. 15 years later in Iowa. Since then, in just the U.S., Aldi has grown to more than 2,000 stores across 37 states. It employs more than 25,000 people.
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 3:33 PM.
