Crofton in the time of the pandemic

September 29, 2020 10:01 PM

Can I buy Crofton cookware without going inside an Aldi or getting price-gouged on eBay?

For safety’s sake I have not been shopping in stores since the pandemic hit, doing everything curbside or delivery. I miss browsing and snacking through Costco... but most of all I miss scouting out Aldi’s limited-time products and especially the Crofton-branded cookware.

This stuff isn’t legendary, but it’s shockingly good and solid considering how amazingly low the price is. As one would expect with Aldi, items rotate in for a few weeks and then out again, and you never quite know what you’ll find. Once something sells out you may never see it again.

Needless to say, this doesn’t fit well with an Instacart-based Aldi shopping model. Only the fewest cookware items (generally the heavily advertised ones) show up in the Instacart product catalog for Aldi — and by the time I can try to order them that way they’re already gone from the store.

Which got me thinking. Are these products really manufactured in one-off runs of a few weeks’ worth of product at a time? That would seem horribly inefficient from a manufacturing perspective. Or are they made normally (and plentifully), and availability is rotated across all the stores to engender that sense of scarcity and the impulse buying mode when you see something you know you may never find again?

If the latter, then most of these products are readily available *somewhere*. And the internet should reduce “somewhere” to “everywhere”, right? So is there a way to order them online?

This quickly drove me to eBay — and then drove me back again once I discovered the prices people were charging for what I was looking for (mostly smallish enameled cast iron). Buy It Now prices plus shipping are easily more than 4x what I had paid for the comparable items in-store at Aldi. I know this is the business model for most eBay sellers... but I’m not prepared to pay that much.

Any other ideas about where I can go online to buy these things for basically Aldi price plus shipping costs?

posted by sesquipedalia to Shopping (5 answers total)

The Aldi general merchandise model is to basically buy what's available in the secondary market. Sometimes thats product itself, sometimes its manufacturing capacity. Then they are putting their house brand on that sometimes. So "Crofton" as it where always exists, but individual SKUs/items might not. Tho they probably have some basics they broadly always have.

So yes - it is kind of that random. Your other option is to figure out who makes it for them and buy their other lines. But that will change by item. Aldi is basically trying to make money by buying product at marginal cost rather than average cost and then handing nearly all of the value of that to the consumer. But that means they have to have more variability in their assortment.

To answer your question - if there is a line or items you especially like figure out who the manufacturer is and look form them on-line.
posted by JPD at 5:45 AM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I miss the center aisle too! If you have multiple local stores you could try the others, in my area one store often has the weekly items far longer than the rest.

The national Aldi Nerd FB page may help you track down the same items under different branding, and if you have a local group they may help you find which stores are easier to score at.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:42 AM on September 30, 2020

I would be happy to look and send it to you at whatever it and shipping actually costs, but I am nowhere near you, so heavy items may be a bit pricy.

Is there anyone else near you that would do similarly?

If you find no other solutions, memail me.

Or, perhaps post this to mefi jobs?
posted by mightshould at 7:02 AM on September 30, 2020

Aldi is keeping their stores (at least here in SoCal) very clean, marking the aisles one-way (ish, people aren't fantastically good at it), and keeping the check-out lines moving. It's my preferred grocery store in these times because they're not so frickin' huge you're in there for an age.

But if it's not safe for you to go, ask around among your friends. Do your planning from the weekly ad, maybe even in a streaming session so you can clearly show them what items you want. If you're in SoCal, I'll do it. (Note: none of my local stores are getting every ad item in large quantities this year, there are things I never find in the store, so I think they are having their share of manufacturing disruptions as well.)
posted by Lyn Never at 8:41 AM on September 30, 2020

Can you use Instacart? Whenever I do an Aldi order with Instacart I browse the "fun" aisles via the app. Candles, kitchenware, canvas totes, all that fun stuff.

On re-read: oh for Pete's sake, I didn't thoroughly read your question. My bad. But it's worked well for me!
posted by lindseyg at 9:12 PM on September 30, 2020