Since its opening on January 11, a stone’s throw from Montparnasse station, the Lidl on Avinguda del Maine has not stopped being full. The brand’s 19th store in Paris could not have dreamed of a better location. “We attract 15,000 customers a week, twice as many as in one of our standard stores, 200,000 customers pass through the area and we are in a catchment area of 50,000 inhabitants”says Michel Biero.
The German discounter’s twenty-two-year-old executive director of purchasing and marketing put his “last bornunder observation “The attendance is very varied: we have the regular customers of a supermarket and travelers passing through“, he asks. The brand already cuts cruppers in Leclerc and Monoprix, located a stone’s throw away. It attracts a clientele fleeing inflation, but also the curious cataloged “CSP+” or who have become addicted to its brands distributors. Bellarom lattes, Sondey sweet biscuits, Combino spaghetti, Lupilu diapers or Q10 Cien moisturizing cream, awarded by UFC-Que Choisir and 60 million consumers.”Our image has changed a lot, we have become cool among the sores that have snacks around our blind tasting galettes des rois“, describes the leader, whom the president of the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert, dubbed “the free electron”. Cool to the point of being one of the favorite brands of the essayist Marcela Iacub. While the novelist Catherine Poulain, author of Le Grand Marin, admits to taking her beers to the countryside.
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Last January 20, the 1,500 square meter store filled its shelves with special offers for the Chinese New Year, and its catalog distributed near the cash registers is filled with shrimp fritters at 3.49 euros, cookies of luck at 1.19 euros and Silver Crest rice bowls at 19.99 euros. .
500,000 new customers won in December
Stacked on the strategic counter of the offers, the “non-food” restocked twice a week, the rice cookers have an “automatic heat-keeping function,” according to the catalog. Many customers flock to the back of the store where frozen breads and pastas are baked on site. Baguettes start at 35 cents and pain au chocolat costs 49 cents. “Here, the average basket is less full, but people return more often“, analyzes Michel Biero. Either because they manage their budget better, or because since Covid they like trips to the supermarket. But also because the store, spread over two floors, does not have trolleys.
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Inflation or not, the success of the yellow, red and blue sign is growing. At the end of the year, Kantar, the consumer watchdog, pegged its market share at 7.9%. “In December, we won 500,000 new customers who want to spend less and are won over by our own brands, which are 20-30% cheaper.says Michel Biero, who only has 10% of the big brands on his shelves. And threatens:If the multinationals continue to demand increases of 15 to 49% of their products without justifying them, we will remove them from the quotation.»
Source : Le JDD
