T. Ozbun
Research expert covering food retail and all food topics for Italy and Brazil
Get in touch with us nowThe growth of the discounters
While the U.S. discount market was once dominated by dollar stores, supercenters, and discount department stores, it has recently transformed into a market with a major presence of European discount supermarket chains such as Aldi and Lidl. Although it opened its first store in Iowa in 1976, Aldi has risen to prominence only in the past decade, when it nearly doubled its number of stores within a decade, now covering most of the contiguous United States. Its sales, which have grown at significant rates in recent years, are set to trail right behind the country's major supermarket chains. Lidl, on the other hand, with a much smaller presence in terms of number of stores and concentrated mainly along the East Coast, has shown with its exceptionally high sales growth in recent years that it is destined to become a potential leading player in the U.S. discount grocery market.The enduring locals
Despite the rise of the two German discounters, local discounters have not yet pulled back, quite the contrary. Grocery Outlet, which thanks to its growing number of stores located in the region where the other two are not, the western U.S. states, has shown good growth in annual sales. And the dollar store leader, Dollar General, whose impressive store count made it the leading retailer with the most stores in the United States, has allowed it to maintain fairly positive sales growth and still remains as one of the leading discount grocery stores in terms of sales.
