The 3 Best Aldi Stores Worldwide, According To Customers

Plenty of grocery shoppers worldwide appreciate Aldi for its range of quality and affordable goods. But as a business, Aldi's relentless focus on affordability means there's not a lot of room for variety from store to store. Each location being about the same size and generally selling the same merchandise helps streamline the entire business and keep costs lower.

That said, there are a handful of Aldi locations that stand out from the thousands of stores worldwide, in part because of their unusual sizes. They include a handful of rare, konbini-style grab-and-go concepts exclusively in Australia, about half the size of a typical store, with options unseen elsewhere.

But the world's best Aldis also includes some of its largest stores. Philadelphia is home to the biggest Aldi in the United States, and the city of Mülheim, Germany, hosts the biggest Aldi in the world. The mostly smaller-format grocery chain isn't afraid of big stores where it makes sense (as shown by an upcoming 25,000-square-foot flagship store in Manhattan), and these existing big stores make unique impacts in their communities as well.

Philadelphia is an important city in American history, and in Aldi history, as the home of the nation's largest store. The 15,000-square-foot location in the heart of Philadelphia is, in many ways, just a larger version of a typical Aldi: meats, produce, dried goods, Aldi Finds, and more. But why is it so big?

Most Aldi locations are small to save customers money, as the small footprint means efficient operating costs and rapid restocks as items quickly sell out. But this massive location has unique strategic potential: It's a short journey from both Center City — Philadelphia's central business district and a major tourist area — and Temple University, a public 4-year university with about 30,000 students.

Between office workers, college students, and tourists on a budget, that's a high volume of potential customers to match the huge square footage. A local Reddit user said of the store's then-pending opening, "This changes the game." And since the store opened in December 2020, customers have appreciated that the spacious layout remains orderly and clean — to say nothing of the free parking in an attached garage.

Australia is home to a handful of the most unique Aldis in the world, unlike anything the chain has elsewhere. In 2021, the first Aldi Corner Store opened in the Sydney business district of North Shore, with about half the square footage of a regular Aldi and, to appeal to a young urban clientele, vibrant artwork inside and out. 

One shopper at this new store told news.com.au that this new concept was "more up-market." And on Reddit, a customer at a Melbourne location said they "very much like the new baked goods section and there's so much more of the special buys around." Customers say that quick bites are often prominently placed, likely including snacks like bags of pork crackle with Himalayan salt, one of the international Aldi items we wish the U.S. had.

There are now seven corner stores across Australia, but they may already be endangered. The Australian Financial Review reported in 2024 that Aldi has abandoned plans to open more Corner Stores in the face of stiff competition from other supermarkets exploring similar concepts. There are no known plans to close or convert the existing Corner Stores, but their unique business may become a drag on Aldi's ultra-efficient operations.

It makes sense that the biggest Aldi in the world is located in the chain's home country of Germany (that is, until the Manhattan flagship opens.) This nearly 2,000-square-meter store (about 21,000 square feet) in Mülheim an der Ruhr used to be a more typical location, until it acquired and expanded into a vacant space next door in 2020.

Google reviews applaud this Aldi for being "a huge, excellent store with a great stock of articles. Highly recommended." When we went to a (different) German Aldi, we found fewer ready-to-eat foods than expected, but lots of delicious regional specialties. But the mammoth Mülheim store has room to be more than a typical Aldi.

Among its unique features is a large bakery that makes an assortment of baked goods in-house multiple times a day. It also has an unusually large produce department, and seven aisles of other goods spread across an area about a third the size of a U.S. football field. But its most unusual detail is that this Aldi sells half a dozen fresh herbs that it grows and harvests on-site, for the freshest possible goods, next to growing them yourself.