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The grocery market is getting another big shakeup now that German discount grocer Lidl opened its first U.S. locations in mid-June.
Now, four additional stores are on tap for a grand opening within the first two weeks of July!
This new supermarket player has a lot of traditional supermarkets shaking with fear because of a reputation for low prices and great service that precedes it.
Read more: 7 new things happening at Dollar General right now
Ten stores throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia are opening on June 15.
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
The first 100 customers to arrive at each location will receive a wooden coin that enters them to win up to $100 in Lidl gift cards. Early shoppers will also receive a free Lidl reusable bag while supplies last.
Eighty more U.S. stores are on tap over the next 12 months.
Most will be concentrated along the Eastern seaboard from Georgia all the way up to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Back in 2016, BusinessInsider reported that Lidl was considering the following locations in five other states:
Delaware
Georgia
Maryland
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Want a Lidl near you? The company wants to hear from you!
You can email them to suggest a location.
Just keep in mind that the proposed site will need a minimum of four acres of space near a busy intersection within three miles of a densely populated area.
Oh, and the company also wants sites with minimum drive-by traffic of 20,000 cars a day!
If you follow the advice of money expert Clark Howard regularly, you may be familiar with the term “hard discounter.” It’s an industry-agnostic term that denotes any business that cuts its operations to the bare bones to deliver low prices to the customer.
So some examples of hard discounters in the airline industry include Spirit Air, Ryan Air and others. In the grocery industry, Aldi is the quintessential hard discounter: Small stores, limited products, limited staff and the lowest prices.
But Lidl is not a hard discounter in the truest sense of the term. Forbes calls it a “soft discounter” instead.
The distinction is that Lidl will have more products and more brand names than Aldi, but still at low prices.
“I’ve shopped in Lidl in a number of places across Europe and they are exceptional,” Clark Howard says. “When you walk into a Lidl”¦ they look really upscale, but they are ruthless in cost control and, in turn, provide you with extraordinary prices.”
Too small, too big and just right: Lidl wants to distinguish itself with its approach to floor planning.
The average U.S. Lidl location is expected to be between 30,000 and 36,000 square feet. The typical Aldi, meanwhile, has about 10,000 square feet of sales floor space. And the average traditional supermarket can be up to 45,000 square feet!
So Lidl hopes to hit that sweet spot: Lots of space for products, but not too much that it becomes a chore moving around the store.
Lidl has a sommelier on staff who tasted more than 10,000 wines to bring the best to shoppers.
Look for a rare Chilean Malbec and a rosé from Provence wine that Adam Lapierre, director of wine for Lidl U.S., says you won’t find elsewhere at retail.
Lidl posts its prices in a weird place. Forget about looking below an item on the shelf for a price. Prices at Lidl reportedly will appear above the item you want to buy!
This post was last modified on March 20, 2019 10:18 am
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