• I'm a private chef, and I compared croissants at Key Food, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods.
• Key Food sold the biggest croissant, but the inside looked more like bread than pastry.
• I like Trader Joe's offering, but Whole Foods' pastry was the closest to a fresh croissant.

I like having croissants at home for a quick breakfast for me and my daughter before work or school. They're one of those staples I know will be enjoyed before they get moldy.

As a private chef, I know croissants are a highly technical pastry that requires a lot of time and effort. As a working mom, I don't have either of those.

Fresh croissants from our local bakery can be expensive, about $5 to $6 each, so it's more economical to grab a pack of four to six at the grocery store.

Here's how the bakery-section croissants at Key Food, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's stack up.

Key Food is a staple grocery store throughout the boroughs of New York.

The first croissants I tried were from Key Food, an NYC-based chain with locations across the East Coast. A pack of four was $4.99, or about $1.25 each, which is a great deal.

The croissants were huge — easily the biggest I bought or saw at any store.

They were also slightly flat, with a pale golden-brown color.

When I cut them open, I was unimpressed with the lamination.

The Key Food croissant hardly had any lamination — thin layers created by folding butter into the dough.

There weren't many distinct layers, and it didn't have the crispy, airy texture I expect from a croissant.

I've tried Trader Joe's croissants before.

Trader Joe's croissants are regulars in my shopping rotation because I frequent the chain a lot.

The store sells a three-pack for $3.99, or about $1.33 each. I think that's a great price for the quality.

The croissants were medium-sized and had a nice golden-brown color.

The croissant was fine, but it was missing a textural element.

Trader Joe's pastries have a lovely buttery texture and slightly more lift and airiness than the Key Food ones.

However, they still lack the crackly, messy quality that is so identifiable when it comes to croissants.

I enjoy these from time to time with just some jam, but they're not the crème de la crème.

Whole Foods' croissant looked the most authentic.

The last croissants I tried were from Whole Foods, where a pack of four cost $7.49, or $1.87 apiece.

Despite being the most expensive of the bunch, they were absolutely worth it.

The croissants were the perfect size — exactly as big as my hand — and had nice domed tops that gave me a peek at the layers underneath. The deep-brown exterior was also tantalizing.

Whole Foods had the closest thing to a bakery croissant.

When I bit into the beautifully layered croissant from Whole Foods, I truly felt like I was eating a pastry, not just a piece of bread.

The flavor had a nice butteriness, but there was still that nice, slightly sour taste from the yeast.

For me, the winner was clear.

Whole Foods was my clear and obvious winner. I'd rather have a nice pastry that's so good I'm guaranteed to eat the whole thing than opt for a cheaper version that's unsatisfying.

Without a doubt, I'll be returning to Whole Foods' bakery section for the four-pack. On weeks when I'm on a tighter budget, though, Trader Joe's pack of three is my runner-up.

With other, better options available, I don't think I'd buy the Key Food croissants again.

Julie Herron drove by the Aldi near her home in Nashville for years before she went in. She usually shopped at Publix, but in 2021, when inflation was sending grocery prices soaring, her curiosity got the better of her. She was shocked at what she found in Aldi.

Everything there was cheap, she said. The store also had cool products, like a variety of German cheeses and $1.59 makeup-removal wipes she said were "superior, honestly," to a comparable $20 product at Sephora.

Aldi has become Herron's go-to store. "My friends say that they call me the 'Aldi Queen,'" Herron, a retired elementary-school teacher, told me. "I go every week."

As grocery prices have jumped by double digits over the past few years, people have felt the sting. For many, Aldi has been a source of solace. A recent Motley Fool analysis found that a basket of 20 products that cost about $65 at Aldi was $11 more at Kroger and about $54 more at Whole Foods. Though Aldi isn't the biggest grocery chain in the US — according to Euromonitor, it captured just 1.4% of US grocery sales last year, compared with Walmart's 25% — it offers a lot of things shoppers are looking for these days: organic meat, store brands, and a quick shopping trip. As a result, it has attracted loyal fans who proudly sport Aldi-branded tote bags, pants, and flip-flops. And it's the fastest-growing grocery chain in America by new store openings, a title it has held for five years, according to the real-estate services company JLL.

The US grocery business is ruthless. Competition is fierce, and profit margins are slim. Many have tried and failed to find success. So how did a German grocery chain find such a ravenous following in America?

From its start in Germany after World War II, Aldi's founders, Theo and Karl Albrecht, were singularly focused on keeping prices low. The brothers expanded their family-run store into a chain of 77 stores in Germany by 1954 with the aim of minimizing expenses and maximizing profit. They didn't advertise. They offered only shelf-stable items that sold well, eliminating the need to buy and run refrigerators. Shoppers even picked their own items off the shelves — a radical concept at a time when German shoppers were used to being served at a counter.

When Aldi opened its first US store in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1976, it used a similar approach. A newspaper ad at the time proclaimed that the store had "no perishables," "no fancy shelving," and "no fancy floor." It promised lower prices for a variety of items, from baby shampoo to salad dressing. The ad estimated that the cost of a basket of goods at Aldi was 18% less than at a rival.

Though that store ended up closing in 1977, Aldi kept working to perfect its formula for American shoppers, largely by going smaller. The Iowa City store was about 40,000 square feet — close in size to a typical modern US supermarket — but the hundreds of stores Aldi opened in the next two decades were just about 10,000 square feet. This meant that Aldi could carry only a fraction of the items that its supermarket rivals could, but it had a solution: Go smaller with selection, too. Instead of stocking a dozen types of ketchup, it sold only one or two. The model caught on, and by 2004 the chain had 700 locations across the country.

Over the years Aldi has found clever ways to become even more efficient. Today, for instance, produce like apples, oranges, and broccoli are sold in prepackaged units to save time weighing and pricing each item. Many shelf-stable items are put on the sales floor in the same cartons they arrived in. Employees often rotate between ringing up customers and stocking shelves. To get a shopping cart, customers have to provide a quarter, which they get back when they return the cart — a system that saves the company from needing parking-lot attendants to round up carts. Though shoppers must bring their own bags and pack them themselves, the prepackaged produce and large barcodes on products contribute to a speedy process.

A September study of grocery prices in Charlotte, North Carolina, by analysts at Bank of America found that while Aldi had raised prices by more than other grocers over the previous year, it was still cheaper than local Walmarts (which were cheaper than Kroger-owned chains and Whole Foods).

Aldi now has about 2,400 stores in the US, with another 800 planned for the next four years. Foot-traffic data from the location-data company Placer.ai indicates that the number of shoppers who visited Aldi stores in the spring of 2022 increased from the same period in 2019. This year, foot traffic at Aldi's stores has grown by 10% to 18% each month compared with 2023, more than double the rise among traditional grocery stores.

Sumone Udono, a trucker based in Wisconsin, has frequented an Aldi that's a 10-minute walk from her home for decades. She buys everything from the brand's organic pistachios to the spices she estimates would cost double at a traditional supermarket.

Selling others on Aldi, though, wasn't always easy. She recalled that in the early 2000s, when she ran a concession stand at her kids' baseball games, she tried to convince the other parents to replace Oscar Mayer hot dogs with the Aldi equivalent to lower prices. The parents were hesitant but ultimately agreed to sell both and see how it went. The Aldi dogs ended up outselling the name-brand ones.

Relying on store brands is one of the most successful cost-cutting tactics Aldi has implemented. Aldi says roughly 90% of the items in its stores are from the grocer's own brands. For comparison, about 20% of groceries sold in the US last year were store brands, according to the Food Marketing Institute.

Scott Patton, a vice president of national buying and customer interaction at Aldi USA, said that having so many private-label products saved the company costs associated with national brands, such as advertising fees. It also gives Aldi more of a say in how products are created — for instance, Aldi worked with one of its mandarin-orange suppliers to reduce the amount of plastic in its packaging, a move which helped save Aldi money, Patton said. Costco and Trader Joe's similarly use store brands to cut costs.

Patton said that relying so much on its store brands increases the pressure for Aldi to find just the right items. "If we don't have the right quality at the right price for the consumer, there's not another option for them to pick from."

To accomplish that, he said Aldi tests about 35,000 products a year. In some cases Aldi has found success designing its products to resemble more-familiar brands. For example, it sells Clancy's nacho-cheese-flavored tortilla chips, which come in a red bag with a triangle logo reminiscent of Doritos, and L'oven Hawaiian sweet rolls, which are comparable to King's Hawaiian rolls.

Phil Lempert, a food industry analyst and editor of the website Supermarket Guru, said that many shoppers used to look down on store brands. "For my parents, there was a stigma." But these days, Gen Z and millennial customers are less likely to care about brand and more likely to prioritize price.

It helps that many Aldi-brand products don't seem generic and boring. It stocks brioche, Dutch Emmental cheese, and chili-lime cashews. "It's a German company, so they have a lot of international products, especially cheese," Herron said.

She's a fan of what's known as Aldi's "Aisle of Shame" — or as the store calls it, the Aldi Finds aisle, a section in the center of most Aldi stores with miscellaneous low-cost nonfood items that change every Wednesday. The aisle's items have included rugs and Dutch ovens — and it has garnered a loyal following. The Facebook group Aldi Aisle of Shame Community has 1.5 million members, the most active of whom post photos of their finds. Recently, fall-themed scented candles were making a splash. In October, the hit find was a pressure-point massage cane.

To cash in on the growing fan base, Aldi has released two collections of branded apparel and accessories. Last fall's selection — "Aldi-das," as some on TikTok call it — included canvas slip-on shoes, travel mugs, and a backpack. Lempert said it's a big change from the Aldi of the 1970s. "Twenty-five years ago, the people who went to Aldi were just looking to save money," he said. "Now it's very hip to go to Aldi."

In 2023, Aldi agreed to buy 400 stores from Southeastern Grocers, including many run by Winn-Dixie, a Florida chain that became a household name in the South during the 20th century. Analysts at the consumer-data firm Dunnhumby said the acquisition should "raise alarm bells for retailers not only in the Southeast but throughout the US."

Of course, Aldi's expansion faces headwinds. Americans have lots of choices for where they shop, and recent entrants like Amazon and Lidl, another discount chain based in Germany that launched in the US in 2017, are competing for market share.

Devout Aldi fans might don their branded windbreakers and dart straight to the nearest Aldi, but most Americans just head to whichever store is closest, said Zak Stambor, a senior analyst who covers retail and e-commerce for EMARKETER, a sister company of Business Insider. "Even if I want to save money on groceries and I fit the demographics of the Aldi customer, if I have to drive 15, 20, or 25 minutes to an Aldi, I'm not likely to do that on a regular basis," he said. Twelve states, including Washington and Colorado, don't have an Aldi.

Then there's the fact that grocery-price inflation, which has pushed many people toward the discount grocer, slowed to 1% in the year that ended in October — though, inflation may return if the Trump administration enacts new tariffs. Walmart recently said it planned to raise prices if Trump's tariffs are implemented.

Lempert, the grocery analyst, thinks Aldi's growth is only getting started. He has met the CEO of Aldi USA, Jason Hart, and toured the company's American headquarters in Illinois. He expects to see even more Aldi stores opening. "By the end of this decade," he said, "they'll probably have 4,000 or 5,000 stores."

Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter at Business Insider.

• I tried classic club sandwiches at Subway, Jimmy John's, and Jersey Mike's to find the best one.
• Jimmy John's and Jersey Mike's impressed me with their bread and meat, respectively.
• My Subway sandwich was somewhat of a letdown for me, largely because I felt the portions were small.

I love sandwiches, and if I had to pick just one to eat for the rest of my life, I'd choose the club.

In my book, a club sandwich consists of bread, mayo, turkey, lettuce, tomato, and sometimes bacon. However, it can also be made with other meats, like ham or chicken.

I set out to try Subway, Jersey Mike's, and Jimmy John's take on the classic sub to see which popular chain serves the best club.

Here's how they stacked up.

I started my club-sandwich journey at Jersey Mike's.

Jersey Mike's started serving sandwiches in the 1950s, and as its name suggested, the original location was in New Jersey. Now, however, it has over 2,000 shops across the US and Canada.

Jersey Mike's club sub consists of turkey, ham, provolone, applewood-smoked bacon, and mayo. I added lettuce and tomato since they were also included in the photo on the website.

My 7-inch sub cost me $11.57.

Jersey Mike's piled on the meat.

The turkey and ham were stacked high on the club sub — the pile was easily an inch thick, and that didn't even include the bacon strips. The meat was shaved thin and tasted fresh.

The tomato slices were a good size, and the mayo wasn't slathered on too heavily.

Unfortunately, the wheat bread didn't seem particularly fresh or soft to me. I also wasn't thrilled with how readily the finely chopped lettuce fell out of the sandwich.

Despite those minor flaws, I'd 100% order Jersey Mike's club again.

Next on my list was Jimmy John's.

Like Jersey Mike's, Jimmy John's has more than 2,000 locations, but its roots are in the Midwest. The first shop opened in Illinois in the 1980s.

Jimmy John's country club features turkey, ham, provolone, lettuce, tomato, and mayo. My 8-inch sandwich cost $11.97.

I thought Jimmy John's club had the best bread.

Jimmy John's French bread, which is the default unless you change it, is sublime. Maybe it was made shortly before I placed my order, but it seemed unusually fresh for a fast-food joint.

I could've enjoyed it with a pat of butter instead of toppings, but I was glad for all the other ingredients.

Although it didn't have bacon, the meat and cheese were cut thicker than Jersey Mike's, and the cheese was more flavorful.

I also appreciated the fresh veggies. The lettuce was chopped but not veritably minced, so it didn't slide off the sandwich as easily.

My country club had a bit too much mayo, so if I ordered it again, I'd definitely specify the amount. Aside from that, the sandwich was pretty much perfect.

I ended my sandwich quest at Subway.

Unlike the other two chains, which only operate out of the US and Canada, Subway is a global sandwich behemoth with tens of thousands of locations.

I'm an unabashed fan and take comfort in knowing that wherever I travel, there's probably some familiar food nearby.

That said, I don't usually order its oven-roasted turkey and ham sandwich, which is the closest thing it has to a club. You pick your own toppings at Subway, so I added mayo, provolone cheese, lettuce, and tomato.

Subway's standard sub was the smallest of the three, at 6 inches, but it was also cheaper. I paid $8.68.

For me, Subway's take on the classic sub was a mild disappointment.

I wish I'd added a lot more toppings because this was the most diminutive sandwich of the trio by far.

There wasn't much meat, just two pieces of cheese, and the veggie portions were modest. In my opinion, the meat was also a bit less flavorful than the others.

Adding bacon would've helped, but it wasn't on the basic sandwich and it would've cost extra. I think I'd rather stick with one of my usual Subway orders anyway.

All three chains had their own take on a club, but some were better than others.

Although none of the sandwiches ticked all of my boxes, Jimmy John's and Jersey Mike's came pretty close.

Both chains offered substantial subs loaded with meats, which were particularly flavorful at Jersey Mike's. Plus, Jimmy John's had the best bread.

The club I made at Subway, by comparison, fell flat. It was smaller, had fewer toppings, and didn't pack much flavor, so I probably wouldn't order it again. However, I'll still return to the chain for other subs.

• I tried the biggest burgers at McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, In-N-Out, and Shake Shack.
• Shake Shack's burger was a little overwhelming, in my opinion.
• Burger King's Triple Whopper impressed me with its flame-grilled patties and fresh toppings.

The biggest burgers at fast-food chains are usually among the more expensive menu items, but which burger is worth that extra cost?

Fast-food costs are a hot topic. Hikes in fast-food prices and "shrinkflation" — a phenomenon in which customers claim menu items are getting smaller while either remaining the same price or costing more — are upsetting customers, and chains are coming out swinging with meal deals aimed at luring customers back. Yet, as some chains see declines in sales, brands are also thinking beyond limited-time promotions.

"We're thinking about value," Wendy's CFO Gunther Plosch said in October, Business Insider reported. "We absolutely believe that value in an environment of value-seeking consumers is not about only executing price-pointed promotions and value deals and value bundles — there's more to that."

In a bid to find out which chain offered the best value on its bigger-ticket items, I recently compared six of the largest burgers sold at fast-food chains. I tested burgers from McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, In-N-Out, and Shake Shack to see how they stacked up in terms of taste, price, and overall value.

Shake Shack's double cheeseburger was a little too heavy for my liking, while Wendy's and Burger King both impressed me with their triple-stacked burgers. 

Here's how the biggest burgers at five fast-food chains ranked, from worst to best.

Shake Shack's double cheeseburger, my personal least favorite, was particularly large.

It cost me $12.49, not including tax, making it the most expensive burger I tried. I chose pickles, onions, and Shack sauce as my toppings.

The burger patties were perfectly crispy on the outside and covered in gooey melted cheese.

The pickles were large and crunchy, and the amount of other toppings was generous. The chain's signature Shack sauce also added a lot of flavor, and the cheese was perfectly melted.

However, the burger was almost too heavy to pick up.

Biting into the Shake Shack burger was a little overwhelming, in my opinion.

I know I purposefully ordered the largest burger on the menu, but this burger was massive. I saw it as a hindrance rather than an asset, and I struggled to get through more than a few bites.

Despite being the most expensive burger, I'm not sure it was worth it. The burger patties were much thicker than quite a few of the other burgers I tried, and the toppings definitely enhanced the flavor. However, it was simply too big, to the point where it tasted like a giant meat-and-cheese grease-bomb. 

My second-to-least favorite burger was a classic: a McDonald's Big Mac.

I was conflicted over whether the biggest burger at McDonald's was the Big Mac — which is physically the largest thanks to the extra bun — or the Double Quarter-Pounder, which is the burger with the most meat. I decided to try both to appease both sets of McDonald's fans who argue for one over the other.

A Big Mac cost me $7.29 at my local McDonald's, excluding tax.

There was a generous layer of pickles, lettuce, and sauce on the sandwich.

The burger patties weren't overwhelming, nor was the sandwich as a whole. I also liked the tangy, creamy Big Mac sauce. However, I thought the added bun made the sandwich taste too much like bread and the other flavors were slightly lost, in my opinion.

The sandwich was a good size and very filling, but I wasn't crazy about the flavor profile.

I simply wanted more flavor happening. Between the extra bun and the generous serving of Big Mac sauce, that was all I could taste. Tomato, cheese, or simply other condiments might have taken the sandwich to the next level.

The 4x4 is the largest burger available at In-N-Out.

The burger, which is on In-N-Out's "not-so-secret" menu, is also referred to as the "Quad Quad," and comes with four beef patties, four cheese slices, lettuce, tomato, spread, and the option to add onions. It cost $9.49, excluding tax and fees.

The giant burger was difficult to hold in one hand, let alone bite into.

The burger was far too large for me to eat in one sitting, though the flavor made me want to. 

All of the elements of the burger were delicious, from the juicy beef patties to the layers of cheese and fresh lettuce and tomato.

However, the additional burger patties ended up detracting from the burger's overall ranking instead of enhancing it. The burger was overwhelmingly heavy, with the tomato and lettuce failing to offset the excessive amount of meat and cheese.

The buns couldn't contain the juicy beef patties, and they started disintegrating as I ate the burger. Truthfully, I wouldn't order this again. Although it was tasty, the amount of meat was just too much for me.

I also tried McDonald's Double Quarter-Pounder with cheese. I preferred it over the Big Mac.

Looking at the burger in the box, I immediately noticed that it had more meat than the Big Mac. The meat was clearly the star of the show, with the other toppings barely visible beneath the patties and bun.

The burger cost me $9.79, excluding tax. I thought this was a fair price for the meat-heavy burger.

The Double Quarter-Pounder with cheese comes with a whopping half-pound of meat, pickles, onions, ketchup, and mustard.

I found this burger to be pretty flavorful, especially thanks to the condiments and large slices of crunchy pickles. However, I wasn't crazy about the bun — while I normally love a sesame-seed bun, I found this one to be pretty bland, airy, and artificial-tasting.

I would order this burger again.

Despite having a lot of meat, the burger didn't feel too overwhelming to eat. I thought it was a realistic sandwich, especially compared to the gigantic burgers from Shake Shack and In-N-Out.

The second-best burger I tried was Wendy's Dave's Triple.

When I arrived at my local Wendy's drive-thru, this extra-large burger wasn't even on the menu. However, thanks to my online research, I knew it could be made and decided to order it anyway. I did wonder how popular this sandwich was, and if many people opt for the triple-patty burger.

The Dave's Triple burger cost $11.24, excluding tax.

Wendy's Dave's Triple burger comes with nearly a pound of beef, American cheese, crisp lettuce, tomato, pickle, ketchup, mayo, and onion.

The sandwich was difficult to pick up, but all of the ingredients appeared to be well-balanced. There was a large serving of tomatoes, pickles, and cheese, so it didn't look like the beef patties would be overpowered. 

I thought this burger had a ton of flavor. The cheese was perfectly melted, and the patties were super juicy.

While I personally couldn't finish the entire thing, I definitely thought the flavors were there and it was a good value for the price.

If I were to change one thing, it would be to remove the mayonnaise. It ended up mixing with the juice from the tomatoes in an unappetizing way, creating a tomato-mayo sauce that I thought brought the other flavors down.

My favorite burger I tried was the Triple Whopper with cheese from Burger King.

Similar to the Dave's Triple, the Triple Whopper also comes with three quarter-pound beef patties, although the ones at Burger King are flame-grilled. The burger cost me $11.29, excluding tax, making it the second-most expensive burger I tried.

Unlike the other burgers, the Triple Whopper only comes with one slice of cheese.

However, I felt that this allowed the other flavors to really come through, and it led to a less gut-filling, more appetizing eating experience.

The lettuce, tomatoes, and onions all tasted fresh, and they added a delicious crunch to the burger.

I also liked the beef patties on this burger the most out of the ones I tried.

The burger patties had a smoky, savory flavor that made the sandwich taste fresh off the grill. I also thought the patties' shape, which were larger in circumference but flatter than some of the other burgers, made the sandwich easier to eat. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this burger and would definitely order it again — if I have the appetite.

While I'm not sure I'm happy to pay more than $10 for any fast-food burger, it was a very generous serving and the most flavorful out of the bunch, without being overwhelmingly huge.