Lidl eyes Mayfair and Chelsea stores amid £500m expansion
You could soon shop at a Lidl store in the swanky London districts of Mayfair and Chelsea as the low-cost supermarket plans dozens more store openings as part of a £500m expansion plan.
The German-owned business, which controls 7.8 per cent of the UK grocery market according to latest Kantar figures, has published a list of more than 200 potential London sites where it is eyeing opening a new store.
These include in Kensington, Notting Hill, Angel, Soho and Covent Garden, as well as suburban locations such as Finchley, Colindale and Uxbridge. Lidl said it was interested in high street sites as well as retail parks and shopping centres.
The company, which is offering a finder’s fee for new site introductions, said it hopes to open as many as 40 new stores by the end of its next financial year.
‘New Lidl stores mean new jobs’
Richard Taylor, chief real estate officer at Lidl GB, said: “This level of investment is a clear sign of our ambition.
“As we enter our fourth decade in Great Britain and hurtle towards a thousand stores, there are still so many parts of the country crying out for convenient access to a Lidl store.
“New Lidl stores mean new jobs, new opportunities for British suppliers, and continued investment into local economies.”
Lidl, which has operated in the UK for 30 years, posted a 16.9 per cent rise in revenue in the year to around £11bn in its latest accounts, with pre-tax earnings jumping to £220.8m.
Shoppers took 35 million more trips to Lidl, the highest annual growth of any UK supermarket, while the discounter secured 326,000 additional shoppers, more than any other supermarket.
Meanwhile rival Asda has seen its market share slip to 12.5 per cent from 14.2 per cent in 2023, while Aldi’s share stayed broadly flat over the same period.