They named it Albrecht Discount, or ALDI for short. And then they went to work rebuilding. The result would be a grocery store every bit as revolutionary as anything conceived by Michael Cullen but uniquely suited to postwar Germany. Where American grocery achieved low prices by circus and frenzy, supersizing the physical footprint to increase sales volume, the Albrechts took an equally effective if opposite approach. They kept store size the same but shrunk their offerings to a tight core. Rather than leverage the new advances in manufacturing to fill out their store with products—creating
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