Discount Retail Chain Aldi UK (German family owned) is winding down its home delivery service of general merchandise ‘Specialbuys’ and wines & spirits to focus on low prices and estate expansion. It will leave click & collect of groceries, which Aldi launched in 2020 and is available from over 200 stores, as its only online service. Aldi launched home delivery of wines and spirits in 2015, helping broaden its appeal to middle-class shoppers.
It now offers many non-food Specialbuys exclusively online.
Delivery of wines and spirits is to end later this month and Specialbuys will no longer be available online by autumn. The service has begun winding down gradually, with the number of items available already reduced. Aldi has drawn swathes of new shoppers from traditional supermarkets in the cost of living crisis. Its market share stood at 9.1% in the 12 weeks to 25 December, up from 7.7% a year earlier, according to Kantar.
Traditional supermarkets are fighting back by investing in lower prices, including Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s Aldi Price Match campaigns. Tesco currently offers 625 Aldi priced-matched products and Sainsbury’s has extended its campaign since Christmas from 233 products to 310. “We keep our prices low by being the most efficient retailer in Britain and we have therefore taken the decision to stop selling wine and spirits online for home delivery from later this month,” said an Aldi spokesman. “We will also stop selling our Specialbuys online for home delivery later this year.” He said Aldi was “working with our colleagues to understand the impact of this change”, which was first reported by the Sun newspaper.
“This will involve exploring different options for our colleagues across Aldi,” the spokesman added.
Aldi has been struggling to keep up with its own estate growth targets, falling short of an ambition to have 1,000 stores by 2022. It currently has over 950 stores and expects to opens its 1,000th this year.
Aldi UK & Ireland CEO Giles Hurley told The Grocer in November that securing planning permission had become more challenging in the past two to three years, as had finding suitable sites.
The discounter’s planning applications are regularly held up by objections and legal challenges from rival supermarkets. The Grocer revealed in December that nearly 40 proposed new Aldi stores across the country were being held up by competitor objections.
Aldi also has also dabbled with delivering groceries via Deliveroo, launching the service in 2020 and rolling it out to over 100 stores. The Grocer revealed in 2022 that the service had been axed.
See here for more: Aldi axing home delivery of Specialbuys and booze | News | The Grocer
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