German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

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German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by submariner »

https://consumerist.com/2017/02/15/lidl ... r-in-town/
"So far, it sounds like the chain will offer what American consumers love about its global competitor Aldi, but in a larger format store. Lidl’s U.S. stores will be around 20,000 square feet, while a typical Aldi store has 10,000 square feet of sales floor. Stores will have only six aisles and display some merchandise on islands, making them easy to navigate.

The Washington Post reports that the company has a prototype store in Virginia, and plans to open its first 20 stores in the United States this summer. They’ll be in Virginia and in North and South Carolina.

Lidl USA plans to have 100 stores open by the end of 2018."
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by pseudo3d »

Hmm, right where Food Lion has a lot of their stores. Almost as if they might...nah. That might rock the boat in the wrong ways.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by klkla »

submariner wrote:https://consumerist.com/2017/02/15/lidl ... r-in-town/
"So far, it sounds like the chain will offer what American consumers love about its global competitor Aldi, but in a larger format store. Lidl’s U.S. stores will be around 20,000 square feet, while a typical Aldi store has 10,000 square feet of sales floor. Stores will have only six aisles and display some merchandise on islands, making them easy to navigate.
Supermarket News says the stores will be 36,000 sq. ft. in this article which seems kind of big to me. I wonder which publication is correct?

http://www.supermarketnews.com/store-de ... pen-summer

"Lidl’s planned U.S. stores of 36,00 square feet would be more than twice the size of typical Aldi locations." The spelling error is theirs on the square footage.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by submariner »

klkla wrote: Supermarket News says the stores will be 36,000 sq. ft. in this article which seems kind of big to me. I wonder which publication is correct?

http://www.supermarketnews.com/store-de ... pen-summer

"Lidl’s planned U.S. stores of 36,00 square feet would be more than twice the size of typical Aldi locations." The spelling error is theirs on the square footage.
According to Lidl US' real estate development page, the criteria for a Lidl store (PDF link) is a 4.0 acre plot capable of accommodating a 36,000 sq ft standalone store. That number can fluctuate for actual retail space based on space needed for stockroom and service departments, but I think you're right that 30-36,000 seems like a more accurate number.

Interesting that the article talks about VA, NC, and SC; but Lidl's career page has store manager openings for locations in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and even listing the titles as "MD/DE","PA/NJ", and "GA/SC" hinting at stores in Maryland, New Jersey, and Georgia as well. The Real Estate development page supports this market area. It also looks like their headquarters will be in Arlington, VA just down the Potomac from the Pentagon.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by pseudo3d »

So, serious question, could Lidl gain a serious entry into the Eastern United States by buying and converting the Food Lion stores? They're about the same size and not seem to be going anywhere by themselves, plus it would give them retail estate.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by BillyGr »

submariner wrote: According to Lidl US' real estate development page, the criteria for a Lidl store (PDF link) is a 4.0 acre plot capable of accommodating a 36,000 sq ft standalone store. That number can fluctuate for actual retail space based on space needed for stockroom and service departments, but I think you're right that 30-36,000 seems like a more accurate number.

Interesting that the article talks about VA, NC, and SC; but Lidl's career page has store manager openings for locations in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and even listing the titles as "MD/DE","PA/NJ", and "GA/SC" hinting at stores in Maryland, New Jersey, and Georgia as well. The Real Estate development page supports this market area. It also looks like their headquarters will be in Arlington, VA just down the Potomac from the Pentagon.
Seems that was mentioned somewhere, that they were targeting a range from GA to NJ. I'd suspect this article focuses on VA, NC, SC as that appears to be the first batch (the 20 mentioned), while their own sites are listing all the areas to get interest as they will need those areas covered in the not too distant future (and might want to have at least a few managers hired before they do expand, maybe to have them trained in the first stores?).
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

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pseudo3d wrote:So, serious question, could Lidl gain a serious entry into the Eastern United States by buying and converting the Food Lion stores? They're about the same size and not seem to be going anywhere by themselves, plus it would give them retail estate.
It may be possible, but based on the criteria Lidl is laying out for their stores (they seem to only be soliciting lot properties for standalone stores) I'd say it's unlikely.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by buckguy »

It seems odd that they want to take on such a large geography which has a diverse collection of markets (in terms of competitors, demographics) and its a swath of the country where other Europeans have not had rousing success. Aldi, with its generic stores and simple model has taken an organic, methodical approach over several decades and that would seem to be a better model than this.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by BillyGr »

submariner wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:So, serious question, could Lidl gain a serious entry into the Eastern United States by buying and converting the Food Lion stores? They're about the same size and not seem to be going anywhere by themselves, plus it would give them retail estate.
It may be possible, but based on the criteria Lidl is laying out for their stores (they seem to only be soliciting lot properties for standalone stores) I'd say it's unlikely.
Although I don't know about overall, I can think of several Food Lion stores that I've seen that are basically stand alone buildings (or at least if on a property with others they are a separate building, rather than being attached to a strip of smaller stores).

I suppose there's also the option that if the current combo of Food Lion with the Ahold stores in the area turns out to be too much they might sell off some locations (as they did when first combining to other stores) and that could be a place for a new chain to come in and pick up locations that they could use to save building time.
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Re: German chain Lidl sets eyes on Virginia, Carolinas

Post by pseudo3d »

Enh...I know Aldi likes stand-alone buildings but I can think of a few examples where they only occupied part of an older building. Same with Fresh & Easy and The Fresh Market.

I don't know about Lidl, especially where they're trying. It reminds me of Fresh & Easy, where the industry thought they would be a game-changer that would render full-sized supermarkets obsolete, then it ended up folding a few years later. And going back even further, the European hypermarkets didn't revolutionize retail as they expected (and what we ended up with was discount stores with a sub-par grocery store bolted onto them).
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