Lidl is poised to make a serious play for the online grocery market in Germany, with plans to offer click & collect on fresh and frozen products later this year. The discounter is investing heavily to boost its German online grocery offering, which to date has been restricted to nonfood and ambient grocery lines only, and is set to start trialling the new service in Berlin in December, according to a report in Germany’s Manager Magazin. Other German regions are expected to follow. Customers will be collecting their fresh grocery orders in store; it is not clear if Lidl also plans to offer home delivery at some point. Lidl is ramping up investment in online as Germany’s online grocery market is becoming increasingly competitive, with Amazon Fresh expected to launch shortly. In late 2015, the discounter acquired German grocery delivery startup Kochzauber, and its dedicated online division, Lidl ECommerce International GmbH, now counts about 1,000 staff, according to Manager Magazin. The new click & collect service was part of a wider “ninefigure sum” investment in online by parent company Schwartz Group, which also owns the Kaufland chain, the magazine added. Kaufland has been testing an online grocery service in Berlin since early October. Boris Planer, analyst at Planet Retail in Frankfurt, said German grocers were now finally getting serious about ecommerce. ”Edeka, Rewe, Kaufland, Lidl, Globus, Real are now all in it, and that’s after years of passive attitudes, and over 15 years after Tesco started in the UK. The segment is very small still, accounting for around 1% of national grocery sales, but everyone’s now worried about missing the bus should grocery ecommerce really get big. Some retailers – including Metro Group and Rewe – have burnt their fingers in the past by not taking the internet seriously enough early enough.”
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