Get your quarters ready: the Aldi on Loudon Road will open its doors on Oct. 25 at 8:30 a.m.
The 19,000-square foot store is the first of its kind in Concord and the seventh in New Hampshire. It is part of a $3.4 billion effort to expand the company to 2,500 locations by 2022, according to an Aldi U.S. press release.
The store’s grand opening will be marked by a “Golden Ticket” giveaway, offering gift cards to the first 100 customers in the store, according to a press release.
Aldi will be the sixth dedicated grocery store in Concord, including a Shaw’s located diagonally down the street, another Shaw’s on Fort Eddy Road, two Market Baskets and a Hannaford. A possible supermarket has been teased for Interchange Development LLC’s plot off Interstate 93’s Exit 17, but details have been scarce since Concord’s city council approved a zoning change late last year.
Aldi was founded in 1961 in Germany by the Albrecht family, according to their company website, a family name also responsible for Trader Joe’s, Aldi’s earthier and more expensive brother. The company is headquartered in Batavia, Ill., has more than 1,600 stores in 35 states and employs more than 25,000 people.
The company says Aldi’s “no-frills grocery shopping experience” helps keep prices down, with unconventional strategies like minimal unpacking of products on the shelves and a quarter deposit for carts to cut time staff has to wrangle them in the parking lot. It sells only its own name-brand products.
The store will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Aldi is the first building to be completed in a new shopping plaza put together by Dundee Investments LLC, which includes Michael and Rick D’Amante.
A plan for the plaza approved last fall by the planning board included a 4,365-square-foot fast-food restaurant and a 6,250-square-foot retail store at 285-287 Loudon Road. It will have 164 parking spaces, including seven handicapped spaces and 31 compact spaces.
Earlier this year, Dundee purchased 30, 34, 36 and 42 Old Loudon Road and 285-287 Loudon Road for a total cost of about $3.5 million.
That’s almost $2 million more than the six properties’ 2017 assessed value, according to city data. One of the most expensive properties, 34 Old Loudon Road, was a 0.6-acre vacant lot that sold for $884,600 – about 10 times more than the appraised value of $85,400.
Another property, 42 Old Loudon Road – a 1.6-acre lot with a 1,200-square-foot ranch built in 1973 – also sold for $884,600, more than double its city-appraised value of $408,500.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)