Santa Claus Comes To Town At Palatine Aldi

PALATINE IL — 'Tis the week before Christmas, and all through the town, not a grocery store is empty — especially when Santa's around! Santa Claus has arrived at Aldi in Palatine, 761 E. Dundee Rd., delivering curbside pick-up orders to customers at the store.

The jolly old man himself is greeting customers, loading a sleigh full of curbside grocery orders packed in festive bags into shoppers' cars, while posing for free, socially distant car-side photos, according to Aldi. The photos will be captured by a professional photographer and shared digitally with families for free after the visit. The meet and greet is set to be a completely contactless experience and a way for kids to see Santa this year.

Shoppers can pay Santa a visit this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, at Aldi stores in Palatine, Tinley Park, Elgin, Plainfield and Wheaton. Santa Claus will be there from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, and all shoppers have to do to reserve their spot is place an Aldi curbside order at shop.ALDI.us or in the Aldi mobile app.

This is the first time the Palatine Aldi has ever held an event like this, according to Heather Moore, Dwight Divisional Vice President with Aldi.

"We just introduced curbside to all these stores back in May," Moore said. "We have over 50 stores here in Chicago land that have it, and [it's offered at] over 700 stores across the country ... but this is the first time that we're having Santa bring groceries to people's cars."

Moore said Aldi wanted to hold this event to help lift the spirit of shoppers as we near the end of 2020, a particularly straining year for many.

"It has been such a tough year for everybody. Whether it's from COVID, jobs or whatever's going on," Moore said. "[To bring] a little bit of joy to the holidays, we thought this was a really great thing."

Moore said the response has been positive, as customers line up to receive their orders. She said for some, it was their first time using the curbside pickup feature.

"They're so excited. It's such a nice surprise to so many of them because they didn't know," Moore said. "These are people that either have been doing curbside with us for months, or this is their first time. The holidays are kind of a crazy time of the year, and they're super excited when they see Santa bring their groceries out."

Did you go see Santa? Let us know!

Yasmeen Sheikah, Patch Staff contributed to this piece.