Aldi's Frozen Fruit Is The Actually The Same As Other Major Retailers

If you've ever shopped at Aldi, you know that it's widely beloved for its low prices, which the store achieves by a number of means, including limiting staff and selling almost exclusively private-label products. This no-frills shopping experience is what keeps customers coming back for more and feeling like they scored some serious savings.

But Aldi doesn't strictly make its private-label products in its own production facilities. Like many other big-box grocery stores, Aldi establishes relationships with suppliers and labels products under its brand names, similar to how Walmart puts out its Great Value products or Costco its famous Kirkland Signature brand. In fact, when it comes to the time-saving product of frozen fruit, Aldi appears to be going right along with its grocery store competitors by sourcing its frozen fruit from the same major supplier. That would be the Scenic Fruit Company, which has been producing fruit products since 1931. Based in Oregon, this family-owned company sells its own products and works with larger companies to produce private-label brands. At Aldi, frozen fruit is typically sold under the Season's Choice label, though some products have also been produced under the Simply Nature house brand.

While Scenic Fruit Company has been in business for many years, we know that it's linked to Aldi and other major retailers because of a less exciting reason: food recalls. In 2019, some of its frozen blueberry products were pulled because foreign material was detected inside the packaging, including Kirkland Signature-branded packages sold at Costco. Aldi did not appear to be affected by this recall.

Another recall hit major frozen fruit brands in March 2023 and provided a clearer link to Aldi. This time, the cause was possible hepatitis A contamination that was linked to products for sale at Aldi, Costco, and Trader Joe's, among other retailers. By June 2023, that recall expanded to include Great Value-branded frozen fruit sold at Walmart, as well as frozen fruit sold at H-E-B. However, there's a distinct silver lining here. While no one's happy to hear about frozen fruit potentially contaminated with pathogens or foreign material, it's also a sign of a food safety net that's caught a problem before it spirals out of control.