Customers browse produce during the grand opening of the Lidl Ltd. store in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Thursday, June 15, 2017. Lidl opened its first U.S. stores this week, with plans for as many as 100 by the summer of 2018.
Photographer: Benjamin Boshart/Bloomberg
The Price War Over American Groceries Is Getting Bloody
The frontline of the new war for the American supermarket runs through the aisles of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It’s a battle over a few pennies on the price of milk, mustard, detergent, and barbecue sauce—and perhaps the future of groceries.
Winston-Salem is home to one of the 10 new supermarkets opened last month in the Carolinas and Virginia by the German discount chain Lidl KG, known for low prices on private-label items. The new store is a short drive from a Whole Foods Market Inc., the upscale grocery chain that’s in the middle of a proposed $13.7 billion takeover by Amazon.com Inc. with the potential to upend the way Americans shop for food. The city of about a quarter-million people is also home to Kroger Co.-owned Harris Teeters and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., well-established national competitors that survive on razor-thin profit margins, as well as a host of independent grocers. There’s even another German discount grocer: Aldi Sued, which operates 1,600 U.S. stores under the name Aldi, has an outpost just down the road from the new Lidl.