Are frozen items at Trader Joe’s and Aldi the exact same food sometimes?

They have the same parent company…the Albrecht family. It is possible that they will have the same foods. I have never seen it, but possible. I don’t know how they buy or package foods, so I don’t know if the scallion pancakes, for example, come from one source or not. I have not found much at either store that isn’t good, though the meats at Aldi’s are somewhat lacking in my opinion. They just put an Aldi’s in near my house and it is good. The vegetables are fresh and the packaged foods seem to be good. The only think I got that I didn’t like was canned corned beef. I don’t usually buy it so I really don’t have a point of reference, but it had all the consistency of dog food and had an odd flavor.

It is a pretty common practice to sell the same product under different brands and different price points to fully exploit the economy of scale.

Aldi and Trader Joe’s are owned by separate companies. One family founded it, and they split in 1960s. So they’re more like cousins than siblings.

But it would make sense for suppliers to sell to both.

I shop at both, but I don’t buy much froze , so off the top of my head I don’t know of any common products.

I believe the story goes that one brother wanted to sell tobacco and the other did not so the company split. The look and feel of the stores here in the states is completely different. Trader Joes seems to cater to a more upscale crowd and Aldi a more economical one. I can usually get 90% of my groceries at Aldi but only about half at Trader Joes.

Sometimes I do see what appears to be the same stuff just packaged differently.

I don’t think there are any Aldis near me.

Trader Joe became my favorite and regular food store after I started using the Buycott app and realized Fred Meyer/QFC/Kroger, Safeway/Albertsons, Fred Meyer and most others are full of products by companies which all support policies which are abhorrent to me in one way or another, and are also often less healthy and/or higher-priced than I find elsewhere.

My favorite Trader Joe items include:

Milton’s bread
organic mayonnaise
tuna in water
round olive bread loaf
prosciutto
apple juice
plain fizzy water (mix ¾ fizzy water with ¼ apple juice, cold – favorite cold drink!)
various cheeses
free-range chicken
“Mediterranean” hummus
pretzel bites filled with peanut butter
cheese puffs & Cheeto-like things
blue corn chips
BBQ potato chips
spanikopita
clam chowder
real juice bars
spicy frozen mac & cheese
spinach fettuccine
wide egg noodles
pesto
tomato basil pasta sauce
shallots
avocados
onions

I used to like their chicken noodle soup and their raspberry vinaigrette, but they got discontinued.

@Zaku Thanks for the list!