The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed the way Britain shops
Paul Foley, the former Aldi CEO, who now runs his own retail consultancy, often tells his clients about his attempts to replicate a KitKat in the 1990s. It turns out this is really hard to do without the chocolate making the wafer soggy. Eventually, Aldi gave up. Foley asked his buyer to contact Nestlé’s UK office to announce Aldi’s surrender and request to stock KitKat. Nestlé would not return his call. So Foley ordered the bars from Germany, where they have a slightly different taste. Soon, Nestlé UK starting receiving complaints about the taste of its KitKats, and traced the problem back to Aldi. When they phoned Foley to complain, he “politely refused to cooperate”.
A fascinating long read.