Does Every Aldi Location Have An In-Store Bakery?

There's a reason why we suggest you think twice before purchasing grocery store baked goods: they may not be the freshest, especially if they were made off-site and shipped in. Is that the case at Aldi, where so many customers love to shop and collect bargains on groceries? Overall, Aldi is something of an odd duck amongst supermarkets. It displays products in shipping boxes, it doesn't play music, and it lacks many brand name products — all in the name of saving customers money. 

All told, its small-footprint stores are low on flashy extras. To that end, most don't feature a butcher or fishmonger onsite, nor a deli or a bakery. Aldi claims that its relatively small stores (about 12,000 square feet on average) leads to fewer products, less waste, greater efficiency, and more savings.

While this means that most Aldi stores don't have bakeries, that is changing in some places. In 2018, Aldi began test-driving in-store bakeries, with a smattering of U.S. locations that included select stores in Illinois, Maryland, and Wisconsin. And in 2024, select British Aldi stores began adding bakeries as well. Word is still out on whether the chain plans to widely expand this feature.

Although most Aldi stores lack an in-house bakery, the chain's locations offer a wide variety of baked goods ranging from bagels and English muffins to cookies, muffins, and mini donuts. Are these items worth your money? The answer is a big "maybe." A Foodie feature writer rounded up the best and worst Aldi baked goods, discovering some succulent sweets and dry, stale disappointments. Two of Foodie's sister sites, Daily Meal and Tasting Table, featured similar rankings. The diversity of opinions was fascinating: our writer loathed the Strawberry Cheese Danish, while it was the favorite of the Daily Meal reviewer, and opinions on the many types of Bake Shop cookies were all over the place.

On a Reddit thread, commenters agreed that the chain's lack of an in-store bakery led to certain goods ending up substandard, but that they weren't any worse than those from any other grocer who didn't bake fresh. "The bagels aren't like... good, but they're basically what you'd get in the bread aisle of any store," one such poster shrugged. Basically, you may need to try out a lot of Aldi's baked goods to determine the ones that you, yourself, feel are worth the money. Aldi's Twice as Nice Guarantee ensures that you will either enjoy its groceries or they will be replaced or refunded, so there's little risk involved in taking a chance.

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