Go West, Aldi

German discount grocer Aldi is about to open its first Texas stores, 27 of them in the Dallas area. The move is part of the chain's rapid expansion; it opened about 75 stores last year. Aldi's operates about 1,000 locations in 29 states.
But there is still a gaping hole in its operations: It does not have a single store west of Texas.

Aldi is in a good position to change that. First, its stores have a small footprint, about 17,000 square feet on average, requiring a two-acre plot. By comparison, a Walmart Supercenter is 10 times as large and therefore is not as flexible when it comes to location.

Second, Aldi's might be able to succeed where regional and even larger grocery chains, such as Albertsons, have been forced to close, in larger part because they were unable to compete with Walmart. Many of these closures have been in the west. Aldi's, on the other hand, sells only its own, private-label goods whose prices may even cheaper than Walmart's (WMT),
It's ironic that the West is a blank spot on the Aldi's map, because the Albrecht family, which controls Aldi, also owns Trader Joe's, the popular discount food chain. Trader Joe's is much smaller, with about 320 locations--and it is based in Monrovia, California, a state that is terra incognita for Aldi's.

Maybe Aldi's management, which is based in Batavia, Ill., should meet with the people at Trader Joe's and figure out a plan. In Aldi's case, the West is still very much a land of opportunity.