Aldi opens in Immokalee amid farmworker concerns

When Immokalee residents and shoppers walked into the town’s newest and only name-brand grocery store Sept. 24, many did not realize the tomatoes sold inside will not directly benefit the agricultural workers who picked them from nearby farms.

Aldi had a soft opening Sept. 23 at 1602 Lake Trafford Road, then held its official grand opening a day later, with a line snaking alongside The Immokalee Plaza shopping center. The first 200 shoppers received an Aldi gift bag filled with product samples and a gift card.

Immokalee residents celebrated an anchor tenant returning to the 1970s-built shopping center, which had been without one since Winn-Dixie closed in October of last year. Other than Dollar Tree or corner stores such as Fiesta Food Market, the town of about 32,000 residents had few options for groceries.

“This is magnificent and exciting,” said Immokalee resident Francis Martinez, who walked the aisles of the 11,000-square-foot shopping area with her husband and three children. “After Winn-Dixie closed, if we needed something, we’d have to go to Ave Maria.”

Although Ave Maria has a Publix about 9 miles away, the new Aldi in Immokalee already drew some Ave Maria residents looking for more affordable prices.

“I’m thrilled,” said Maria Romero, an Ave Maria resident. She said she could travel to the Aldi in Immokalee faster than the Aldi just south of the intersection of Oil Well Road and Immokalee Road. “I’m really thrilled for the people here in Immokalee.”

Danny Gonzalez, who co-owns nearby Lozano’s Mexican Restaurant, said he no longer has to drive to LaBelle or Ave Maria to buy immediate needs for the restaurant.

“I am happy that we finally got an Aldi,” Gonzalez said. “Especially when you need the small stuff now.”

But the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a nonprofit human rights organization that formed in 1993 to protect farmworkers from workplace abuses — wasn’t as thrilled.

Aldi, along with Publix, continues to refrain from joining the Fair Food Program, which was set up in 2011 by the CIW. The Fair Food Program has a code of conduct and educational programs designed to protect farmworkers from abuses.

Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and Walmart are members, as are fast-food chains such as Chipotle, McDonald’s and Burger King.

The FFP includes most Immokalee tomato growers, including Lipman Family Farms, Gargiulo, Lady Moon Farms, Pacific Tomato Growers/Sunripe Certified Brands, DiMare and West Coast Tomato/McClure Farms.

Immokalee is synonymous with workers’ rights just as Selma and Birmingham in Alabama are with civil rights, the CIW said in a prepared statement.

“Immokalee is the birthplace of both the Fair Food Program and the worker-driven Social Responsibility model, which is considered to be the new paradigm for protecting fundamental human rights in global supply chains in the 21st century,” the CIW said.

Harvard Business Review named the Fair Food Program one of the 15 most important advances for social change of the past century, along with the polio vaccine, “Sesame Street” and child safety seats.

“Immokalee is now the central hub for a global movement to replicate the FFP’s protections for countless millions of workers,” the CIW said. “The least Aldi could do is recognize the community of farmworkers whose courageous and indefatigable efforts made those two giant leaps for human rights possible, if not recognize it is the community that makes Aldi’s profits possible through its back-breaking, dangerous work every single day in the fields.”

Aldi declined to answer why it has not partnered with the FFP “at this time.” But the store said it has “developed a series of global protection practices that support our dedication to human rights and fair labor standards across all aspects of our business.”

“We have a long-standing partnership with Feeding America and its network of food banks, like the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, to help support communities in Florida and across the country,” Aldi said in an email.

Aldi’s business model benefits consumers by offering lower prices, which result from the store incorporating numerous efficiencies to pass savings on to shoppers, said Chris Hewitt, division vice president of Aldi.

“We stock our items in cases,” Hewitt said while giving a tour of the store — including cases of tomatoes. “It’s an efficiency that leads to lower prices, because it keeps our need for labor low, which keeps our prices low.”

The Immokalee Aldi will employ between 15 and 20 people. There’s a fresh meat and bakery section, but there is no on-site butcher or baker.

Shoppers must insert a quarter to unlock a shopping cart and are encouraged to return the cart to retrieve their quarter. This plays into lower prices through efficiencies, Hewitt said, as Aldi employees do not have to spend as much time retrieving grocery carts.

Aldi also makes its own brands of products. A bag of Doritos costs $3.97. A bag of Clancy’s, Aldi’s in-house brand, costs $1.89 for the same amount of product.

“Right there shows the value principle of the label we offer,” Hewitt said.

A 12-pack of Coca-Cola costs $7.57. A 12-pack of Aldi’s brand, Summit cola, sold right next to it for $4.49.

That case of soda had six sides — and six barcodes — compared with one barcode on the Coke box. The number of barcodes allows the checkout process to go faster and improves efficiency at the store.

“It’s a small thing,” Hewitt said. “But all of these little things, they add up.”

A shopper approached Hewitt and complained about the lack of name-brand products. She was looking for Kraft cheese. Aldi offers an array of its own brands of cheese, and Hewitt informed her she could try the Aldi brand with the store’s “Twice as Nice” guarantee. If she didn’t like it, she could return it with her original receipt, get her money back and get a free replacement product.

“Ninety-two percent of Aldi shoppers recommend us to their friends,” Hewitt said.

Aldi, headquartered worldwide in Germany and in Batavia, Illinois, in the U.S., continues to grow rapidly, with about 2,600 U.S. stores now and plans for about 3,200 by the end of 2028. There are 25 Aldi stores in Southwest Florida.

“One out of three households in the U.S. now shop at an Aldi,” Hewitt said of studies the store has done. “We added 17 million new customers in the past year. We have a lot of growth that’s ahead of us.”

Aldi’s arrival will help the shopping center owner continue to refurbish and revitalize it, said Steve Royal, president of The Royal Companies, which developed the shopping center in the 1970s and still owns and leases it. His grandfather founded the company in 1929, and it specialized in building shopping centers in the interior of South Florida, including Belle Glade, Clewiston, Immokalee, LaBelle and Okeechobee.

A new Wingstop already has been announced and should open by the end of the year at The Immokalee Plaza.

“We’re pretty far along with discussions on two of the vacancies there,” Royal said of the remaining 21,500 square feet left vacant with the closure of Winn-Dixie. “It was a longer process for Aldi to do the conversion.

“We hated to see Winn-Dixie go, especially since they had just done a full remodel of the store. But Aldi will bring a certain component. It brings an avenue to bring additional retailers into the market. We’ll have success as long as the construction costs don’t keep going up on us.”