Not a profitable business model
Aldi is putting major delivery service plans on hold for now
December 11, 2023, 3:53 p.m
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Amazon, Flink and Rewe have been delivering groceries to your doorstep for years. Aldi wants to get involved and is starting a test run in three cities. Now the company reports that it does not want to expand the delivery service. It’s simply not worth it.
The discounter Aldi Süd does not want to expand its food delivery service, which was recently tested in three cities, to its entire distribution area for the time being. “A comprehensive implementation is not currently planned,” said a spokeswoman for the company.
Online food trading is “currently not a profitable business model” due to the high costs of personnel, raw materials and logistics, it said. Delivery fees represented a hurdle for many people “in times of absolute price sensitivity”. When asked how many customers have used the delivery service so far and how long the offer will be maintained in the three cities, Aldi Süd did not want to comment. At the end of August, the discounter announced that it wanted to test the grocery delivery service “meinAldi” for customers in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Duisburg and Oberhausen.
The minimum order value for deliveries is 20 euros. Up to a purchase value of 50 euros, a service fee of 4.50 euros is added. Delivery is free for larger orders. Online grocery shopping is a dynamic market that has also grown significantly as a result of the corona pandemic. According to the Cologne Institute for Retail Research, the online market share of the food and delicatessen sector was only 2.4 percent in 2022, but grew by almost a quarter compared to the previous year. The market leader is Rewe.
As figures from the institute show, the supermarket chain generated net sales of 650 million euros in its online food and beverage shop last year. Second place was taken by the bottle delivery service (467.9 million euros).