So far, the discounter had only offered non-food items in its German online shop and avoided the complex fresh food business. Is the group turning now?
The discounter Aldi Süd is taking an important step towards e-commerce. On Tuesday, the retail giant gave the go-ahead for the test run of a food delivery service, from which Aldi customers in the Ruhr area can order fresh products such as fruit, vegetables, bread, cheese or milk online for the first time. From now on, customers in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Duisburg and Oberhausen can register for the delivery service, Aldi Süd announced. The “Handelsblatt” had previously reported on it.
A test with a “Click & Collect” model is also planned in the future, in which customers order the goods online and then pick them up in the store themselves, Aldi Süd added.
So far, the discounter had only offered non-food items from vacuum cleaners to knife blocks in its German online shop and avoided the complex and difficult business with fresh food. However, there were experiments with food deliveries at foreign subsidiaries in the USA, Great Britain and Switzerland.
Aldi: Time-limited test run
The discounter emphasized that it was a local and time-limited test run. “Currently, a nationwide implementation is not planned,” it said. Because online food trading in Germany is “currently not a profitable business model” due to the high costs for personnel and logistics.
The Aldi-Süd concept is similar to that of the competitor Picnic. This means that the delivery should be based on the milkman principle, in which the delivery vehicles drive fixed routes within a delivery area. For customers, this restricts the free choice of delivery time, but the greater bundling of routes reduces delivery costs.
According to the Aldi website, 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. Above that, the fee is waived.
Source: Stern
