This was the original Aldi strategy. Cut down on variety and compete on price instead. Until the early naughts, the average German Aldi store would have less than 1000 SKUs. In fact, they didn't have barcode scanners. The cashiers knew the code for each SKU by heart. It was only in the last 15 years or so that they slowly ramped up to match other discount supermarkets in selection.

They're still pretty close imho. There's still only one type of spaghetti, one type of wheat flour, etc. Some other articles are more diversified now (cheaper and more expensive olive oil, but all store brand, same with milk, of which there is now {skim, full-fat, fancier full-fat} x {non-organic, organic} iirc) and they've added some brand foods, especially sweets (Aldi Nord may be different, I'm in Aldi Süd territory). But it's still much more pleasant to shop there than at regular supermarkets, which have music and advertisements playing and way too many practically identical articles. I don't need twelve brands of yellow mustard.

Aldi Nord is pretty much like any Edeka.

> Cut down on variety and compete on price instead.

I don't care so much about price as I do about convenience. ALDI only sells low-budget store-brands, and that's going a bit too far. I want A brands where it matters, and high-quality generic things where it doesn't.

Not sure where you are, but Aldi Süd in Germany is pretty nice. It's not the place to go shopping for specialty foods, of course, but for everyday items, their products are well-priced for decent quality in my experience. In some areas it's even better than that, their cheese selection puts quite a few non-discount supermarkets to shame.

In the US, I really liked Trader Joe's, which seems like an up-market version of Aldi. Which makes sense, seeing as it's owned by Aldi Nord.

With the advent of home delivery, this is as easy as filtering inline search results to said brands. And, if it matters to you, printing out your own minimalistic labels..

The problem is not the labels, the problem is that I don't want to have to make a choice.

Then just buy all generic store brand.

Hire a personal shopper

There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea:

- what seems like superfluous options to you might be required for people with allergies or other conditions

- even those that don't have any medial reasons might still have preferences. eg some washing detergents smell rank to me while others don't. There will be people who have the reverse preferences too. So just because you cannot detect any difference it doesn't mean others also don't.

- monopolies are bad for consumers for a multitude of reasons. Lack of innovation, higher prices, etc. Really this point alone should be multiple bullet points.

What I really wish supermarkets stopped doing was moving stuff around. I know exactly why they do it (lost customers tend to buy more stuff by accident) however as a customer it's REALLY(!!!) annoying having to relearn where you're preferred breakfast cereal is now located when the last place you'd want to be on a Saturday afternoon is stuck in a Supermarket with two bored kids (though these days I just pay for home delivery)

And also a lot of the minimal brand own label foods are not as good.

A uk supermarket substituted its own brand sausages one time and they looked cheap and looked so vile when cooked that the entire packet was thrown away

You have to be careful in that assumption. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it's just preference (eg I prefer Tesco cornflakes to Kellogg's). Often it depends on the supermarket and range (eg some supermarkets will have a few own brands for different price and "quality" brackets).

Another thing to baring in mind that it's quite common for some producers to distribute to different brands. Eg they might make the same product for a budget brand as they would for a premium brand. Maybe just sorting the product by what's more aesthetically pleasing. I've noticed this a lot with loose vegetables where "ugly" carrots would be sold to cheap brands whereas the smaller but prettier carrots would go to premium brand and sold for twice the price (even without factoring in the smaller weight). But it does also happen with some pre-made / pre-seasoned dishes as well.

The best advise is not to take brands nor even price at face value. Try a few products and see what works for you. Unfortunately though, much of our experience is distorted by bias (this is an area for amusement during wine tasting studies under controlled scientific conditions). So often we end up actually preferring the more expensive brand because we assume we should so our brain convinces us we do (isn't our human psychology fun!)

I can’t tell if you’re being ironic, because even for laundry detergents, scents matter, both for personal preference or for medical reasons (some folks have medically bad reactions to scents others find pleasant). You quickly reinvent the combinatorial explosion.

I, on the other hand, detect no meaningful difference between any beers, ‘cause to me they all taste bad. ;)

> even for laundry detergents, scents matter

A detergent should clean my clothes. If there is a scent after washing they aren't clean.

For you... hence the different types of detergents.

But your clothes smelling like sticking your nose into a bag of washing powder feels sooooooo clean

Also, to add to other people's points; newborns/infants should have their clothes washed in non-bio, it's less likely to cause irritation to their skin, conversely it's not as effective due to lack of (biological) enzymes, particularly at lower temperatures, so you should be using regular "bio" most of the time.

Also, competition. If you're happy to pay 10 times more for Colour, Dark and White powders because nobody else makes it, that's your choice, we'll just put it on the shelf next to the rest of the more affordable options.

Sounds like stores during socialism in eastern Europe. No thanks.