Tesco and Wal-Mart-Owned Asda Launch Price War in the UK; Small-Format Discounters Aldi, Lidl and Netto Nipping At Both Giants' Merchandising Heels

Tesco, the number one food and grocery retailer in the United Kingdom with an approximate 31% market share, and Wal-Mart, Inc.-owned Asda, the UK's number two supermarket chain with just a little over half (about 17%) Tesco's share of the food and grocery sales market, have kicked off what the British press and industry analysts are calling arguably the most intense price war in recent food retailing history in that nation.

As we've written about before in Fresh & Easy Buzz, Wal-Mart's Asda, under the leadership of CEO Andy Bond who is a British national, stepped-up its new store development program, store remodels, quality of merchandising and price profile (lower) last year.

Wal-Mart, which acquired Asda a few years ago, had considered selling the British chain. However, instead of doing so, it made a strategic decision last year to invest a significant amount of money in Asda, and to take a run at increasing market share against home country Tesco, which is based in the United Kingdom and is the world's third-largest retailer. Wal-Mart is the worlds leading retailer. France's Carrefour Group is number two.

Two of the United Kingdom's major daily newspapers, the Telegraph and the Times, wrote about the opening salvo of the Tesco vs. Asda price war in today's respective editions. The two retail chains kicked off the price war yesterday, both lowering the prices on thousands of food and grocery products across all categories in their respective stores.

Below are links to the stories from today's UK Telegraph and the Times:

Telegraph.uk.co: Tesco and Asda go to war with price cuts

Times Online: Tesco and Asda start price war as food inflation soars to 14.5%

Tesco and Wal-Mart-owned Asda aren't just lowering the prices of thousands of grocery items and launching a price war because they want to save British consumers money in these super- high food inflation times, although that is a small part of the reason.

Tesco and Asda also aren't merely focusing on each other in terms of the food and grocery retailing competition in the UK, even though the chains are number one (Tesco) and number two (Asda) respectively in the country.

Both Tesco and Asda are concerned about the two Germany-based small-format, limited assortment, no frills deep discount grocers, Aldi and Lidl, which are expanding rapidly and gaining shoppers rapidly in the UK.

Aldi-UK and Lidl-UK are gaining the highest percentage of market share among all retailers in the country because of the high food inflation and resulting price competition. The German chains operate on a bare bones, hard discount model, offering the lowest retail prices on food and grocery products in the UK.

And if the two German discounters aren't competition enough for Tesco and Asda from a price perspective -- which has become the most important thing in the minds of average British consumers as it is currently with U.S. shoppers -- Denmark-based Netto, which operates numerous (and is adding many more) small-format, no frills, deep discount stores similar to Aldi's and Lidl's in the UK, also is nipping at Tesco and Asda's merchandising heels from a price perspective.

What to do?

In part, for Tesco and Asda the what to do is what both chains did yesterday: lower the prices on thousands of items in the stores in order to better compete with these little deep discount stores so they won't lose a significant percentage of market share in these tough economic times.

When you have a 31% share of the market in the UK like Tesco does, which represents lots of British Pounds, losing even 1% or 2% is a very big deal. The same is the case for Asda with its about 17% share.

Tesco is fighting back against not only Asda (and Asda Tesco) but the no frills deep discounters as well -- and is doing so in a number of ways.

In addition to lowering prices yesterday, Tesco is introducing a new price-focused, no frills value line of products in its stores. This line is aimed directly at countering the cheap store brands offered by Aldi, Lidl and Netto in the UK.

Today's edition of the Financial Times has a piece about Tesco's targeting Aldi and Lidl. You can read the story here: Tesco targets Aldi and Lidl.

Additionally, Reuters Business has a piece about Tesco's new line of products, which are called Discount Brands. Tesco is initially rolling out 350 items under the brand, including biscuits, teas, cleaning products, hair care items and more. You can read the story here: Tesco launches new low-cost range, cuts prices.

While Tesco attempts to make inroads with in the United States, which is Wal-Mart country (U.S-based Wal-Mart is the number one food and grocery sales market share leader currently in the U.S.) with its small-format, combination basic grocery and fresh foods Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery stores, Wal-Mart is upping its anti in the UK with Asda.

For Wal-Mart with Asda in the UK, it's position as the second-largest retailer in the country with a 17% market share is not a bad one. If it can hold that share with the attack of the small-format deep discounters Aldi, Lidl and Netto nipping at its and Tesco's heels during the down economy and these high food inflation times, its should be positioned well for when the economy improves.

Similarly, Tesco is without a doubt in a solid position in the UK. After all, its markets share of about 31% equals the combined total of number two Asda and Sainsbury's (the UK's number three supermarket chain with about a 15.5% market share).

On the other hand, Tesco's Fresh & Easy is just a start up in the U.S. So the retailer has miles to go -- perhaps a major acquisition of a major U.S. supermarket chain -- before it even puts market share numbers on the board in the U.S.

Despite this across the pond imbalance (advantage Wal-Mart), Wal-Mart and Tesco both play in the larger global retailing arena. However, protecting their respective home bases of the United States (Wal-Mart) and the United Kingdom (Tesco) is key to both chains' global strategy and success.

As a result, expect to see more price competition from Tesco and Asda this year and into 2009 in the UK. With the perfect storm of economic negatives affecting the U.S. and the UK, its doubtful we are going to see a break in the soaring cost of food and grocery products anytime soon, after all.

Breaking News and Analysis: German Small-Format Discount Grocery Chain Lidl is 'Coming to America' By 2012 Says Chief Executive Klaus Gehrig

German small-format discount grocery chain Lidl plans on joining its fellow "fighting tiger," price-focused German food retailing cousin Aldi by expanding into the United States, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned.

In an interview published today in the German newsweekly Focus Magazine ("Trade: Lidl boss Klaus Gehrig will, despite the setbacks by scandals continue to grow--soon in the USA and Switzerland"), Klaus Gehrig, chief executive of Lidl's parent company Schwarz Gruppe, tells the publication: "We are now preparing to enter the U.S. market."

Gehrig tells Focus Magazine Lidl plans to enter the United States food and grocery retailing market by 2012, likely having its first stores in the states before that date.

The small-format grocery retailer's strategy is to significantly build-up its European business, including opening numerous new Lidl discount grocery stores in the region, and then move into the U.S. by 2012, Gehrig says in the interview.

Gehrig also says Lidl plans to have a significant grocery retailing presence in Switzerland with its small-format, price-impact grocery stores. He says the retailer is planning to open about 80 small-format Lidl stores in that nation.

In addition to its plans to grow significantly throughout Europe, including in Tesco's home turf of the United Kingdom where Lidl is becoming a major grocery retailing player, CEO Gehrig says Lidl plans to open 1,000 new stores in Germany, which would put it near German rival Aldi's store count of about 4,000 in the homeland.

Aldi and Lidl are strong competitors in Germany and in other parts of the world, like the UK, where both grocery chains have stores in the same markets. Therefore, it doesn't come as a surprise to Fresh & Easy Buzz that Lidl is going after Aldi at home in Germany and in Europe, where Aldi has become a major food and grocery discount retailing force, as is Lidl.

Aldi currently has about 900 of its small-format, limited assortment discount grocery stores in the U.S. and is growing its store count by 75 -to- 100 new stores a year for the next five years, according to an announcement Aldi USA, its American division, made late last year.

Lidl and parent company Schwarz Gruppe has been watching Aldi USA for a long time--Aldi first came to the U.S. in about 1975--as it has been watching Tesco since it opened its first small-format Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery stores in the Western U.S. beginning in November, 2007.

Schwarz Gruppe believes it does small-format, discount food and grocery retailing better than Aldi (and of course Aldi disagrees) in its Lidl stores, and it appears the grocery chain believes it can do well in the United States--which is a potentially lucrative market for international food retailers--so has decided to cast its lot across the Atlantic beginning shortly before or in 2012 when Gehrig says the German "fighting tiger" small-format, price-focused discount grocer plans to enter the U.S. market with its first stores.

There is no information as of yet regarding which regions of the U.S. Lidl plans to target initially. However, Aldi's current 900 stores are located in the Midwestern, Mid-Atlantic and eastern regions of the country.

Lidl could decide to start in one or all of those regions if it wants to go head to head against rival small-format discounter Aldi. Or it could pursue a Western U.S. strategy (or a combination strategy), taking on for example Tesco, which is focusing its Fresh & Easy small-format combination basic grocery and fresh foods grocery markets in the Western U.S. states of California, Arizona and Nevada at present.

Lidl's stores are different than Tesco's Fresh & Easy in that they put more of an emphasis on selling basic grocery items at discounted prices. Although, the Lidl stores in Germany and elsewhere offer some fresh and specialty foods, it isn't as much of a focus as with the Tesco Fresh & Easy stores. Lidl stores average 10,000 -to- 15,000 square feet.

The small-format Lidl discount grocery stores are best described as no frills, warehouse-style stores in design and merchandising philosophy. In fact, in many ways they are like lots of supermarkets from the 1970's and 1980's in the U.S. These stores used a no frills merchandising style which also included the "stack them high (grocery products) and sell them fast" philosophy, which was to fill the store aisles with lots of cut-case product stacks and sell the goods for cheap. High stacks, cheap prices, fast turnover.

Inside a Lidl small-format, no frills discount grocery store.

Lidl stores also employ what we call the "sell everything but the kitchen sink" in-and-out promotional merchandising strategy just like Aldi does. Lidl and Aldi stores sell everything from television sets, furniture, electronics, clothing, garden supplies and more on an in-and-out promotional basis, advertising the various items in their weekly advertising circulars at hot prices and stacking the goods high and selling them fast in the stores.

Take a look here at Lidl's current advertising newsletter which features bathroom goods like towels, along with Budweiser beer, Pepsi Cola, Ty-phoo brand Tea, Knorr brand sauces, calculators, woman's fashion items and other goods. Like we expect with Aldi, we just know a kitchen sink will show up one day in a Lidl newsletter advertisement.

However, at least half of Fresh & Easy's focus--a focus that's central to the chain's success--is on selling everyday grocery items at discount or affordable prices. Both Lidl, Aldi and Fresh & Easy also focus on store brands over national brands.

Although they are infants in terms of store count in the UK compared to the nation's major food retailing players, both Lidl and Aldi have recently been taking a small amount of market share away from Tesco there, where it's the leading food and grocery retailer with about a 31% share of the market. The two German discount grocery chains also have been taking share away from the UK's number two supermarket chain, Wal-mart-owned Asda, and number three, Sainsbury's.

Schwarz Gruppe, Lidl's parent company, which also owns the Kaufland retail chain based in Germany, is the sixth-largest food and grocery chain in the world, according to the research firm Planet Retail, which annually ranks the top global food and grocery retailing chains by annual sales and other criteria.

Annual sales for Schwarz Gruppe in 2007 was $70 billion dollars (~50 billion Euros), an increase of 5.8% over 2006. Lidl accounts for about $67.869 billion of that total (the rest being Kaufland), according to Planet Retail's latest estimates.

By contrast, Aldi is ranked by Planet Retail as the ninth-largest global retailer, with sales of $57,522 in 2007.

Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer, followed by France's Carrfour, Tesco, Germany's Metro Group, U.S-based Kroger Co., and then Schwarz Gruppe, parent company of Lidl, at number six.

Schwarz Gruppe currently has its small-format Lidl discount grocery stores, about 8,580 in total to date, in the following nations: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Like Aldi, which essentially operates the same small-format discount grocery store format throughout the world, with some customization depending on the national market, Fresh & Easy Buzz expects Lidl to do the same; to bring its basic Lidl format to the states and only to tweak and customize the merchandising mix based on U.S. consumer tastes and preferences like Aldi USA does.

In contrast, Tesco created what essentially was a special format for the U.S. with its Fresh & Easy grocery stores, in that Fresh & Easy is modeled after Tesco's popular European Tesco Express small-format stores, but parts company with those stores in the areas of design and overall merchandising mix, especially the emphasis on fresh, prepared foods. As such, Fresh & Easy qualifies as being a separate format from Tesco Express in our analysis.

Although 2012 is four years away, Lidl will inject much excitement and competition into what already is a small-format food and grocery retailing revolution happening in the United States.

For example, U.S-based SuperValu, Inc. now operates about 1,600 of its small-format Sav-A-Lot discount grocery stores in the U.S., and Aldi USA, as we mentioned, plans to grow its current 900 store base by up to an additional five hundred stores, for a potential total of 1,400 discount grocery markets, over the next five years.

Tesco hopes to have 150 of its small-format Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market combination basic grocery and fresh foods stores open in California, Nevada and Arizona by the end of this year, with double that amount opened by the end of 2009, including its entering the new markets of Northern California (Bay Area and Sacramento Metro) and California's Central Valley.

Tesco's long terms plans with Fresh & Easy have included moving into Oregon and Washington State from Northern California and into additional states in the Western USA.

As Fresh & Easy Buzz has reported in the past, Tesco executives also have looked at opening Fresh & Easy stores in the Chicago, Illinois Metropolitan region and in parts of New York and Florida as part of its long term strategy.

Wal-Mart and Safeway stores also are now in the small-format food and grocery retailing business in the U.S. with their "The Market" and "Marketside" 15,000 square foot formats respectively. Safeway opened its first small-format store, "the Market by Vons," in Long Beach, California on May 15, and plans to open more in California and likely elsewhere in the numerous U.S. markets where it does business with its current 1,750 supermarkets.

Wal-Mart's Marketside, which are a combination basic grocery and fresh foods grocery store format similar to Tesco's Fresh & Easy, but with a difference in that the Marketside stores will prepare food right in-store and even have in-store seating for customers to eat-in, will start opening--the first of four initial stores--in the Phoenix, Arizona Metropolitan region this summer, perhaps as soon as July.

Numerous other retailer's are opening small-format grocery stores in the U.S., as we've reported here on Fresh & Easy Buzz.

Lidl is a seasoned, major global player though in small-format discount food and grocery retailing. Therefore, its announcement that it's coming to America is a very big deal, both for small-format grocery retailing (and all format retailers) in the U.S. in general, and for all of the retailers currently participating in the small-format food and grocery retailing arena in the U.S.

Lidl, which is currently embroiled in a bit of a scandal in Germany over using cameras to spy on its employees in locations like employee rest rooms, will need to avoid that behavior in the U.S. however. Such behavior not only is considered taboo in American business but can cause a company hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and employee settlements and enough bad press to sink it before it even starts.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Venture in the USA, and the Ironic Challenge to its Food Retailing Dominance at Home in the UK

Tesco, parent company of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in the U.S., is not only the third-largest retailer in the world in terms of sales volume, it's also far and away the number one retailer at home in the United Kingdom, with an impressive 30% share of all the food and grocery products sold in the country.

Number-two Asda (owned by Wal-Mart, Inc.), number-three Sainsbury's, Morrison's, the UK's fourth-largest food retailer, the Co-op, Waitrose, Aldi, Lidl (both German-owned chains) and a few others split up the remaining 70% of the market share. That's a lot of retailers to fight over that 70% pie. In other words, Tesco stands alone in its dominance of the UK food retailing market. Currently it does.

We use the word "currently" in the above sentence, because despite Tesco's present status as the dominant food retailing market share leader in the UK, a serious challenge is being waged against the retailer's market share ownership.

The grocery chains primarily waging that battle are Wal-Mart-owned Asda, Morrisons, and the two German grocers, Aldi and Lidl, which operate small-format, no frills, limited assortment discount stores throughout Europe. (Aldi operates its small-format discount stores in the U.S. as well. It also owns Trader Joe's in the U.S.) It's the two small-format discount grocery chains, Aldi and Lidl, we focus on in our piece today.

The Aldi and Lidl grocery stores in the UK average about 15,000 square feet. The stores design is basic and no frills, but attractive. The product mix is similar for both Aldi and Lidl: a mix of private label (about 60% -to- 65% of what they sell) and national brand grocery products (about 35 to- 40% of what the stores' sell.)

Both German-based chains put a major focus on price, and offer a limited assortment of basic grocery items. The stores also offer a small selection of higher-end specialty foods and grocery products at hot, discount prices. In the UK, the stores are called "downmarket" supermarkets in the industry.

Aldi's and Lidl's stores' in the UK may sound a bit familar to you. In a number of ways--store size, the limited assortment basic grocery products' offering with a focus on low price, specialty items offered at disount prices, for example--Tesco's Fresh & Easy small-format grocery stores in the U.S. are similar to the German "downmarket" stores in the UK.

There are differences however. Unlike Aldi and Lidl, Fresh & Easy in the USA has a second focus in its stores--which is an extensive selection of fresh, prepared foods. All three--Aldi, Lidl and Fresh & Easy sell fresh produce and meats. The Fresh & Easy stores also are somewhat more upscale in design, but not much.

Tesco also has a small-format grocery store in the UK called Tesco Express. It's similar to Fresh & Easy in the USA in many ways. However, unlike Aldi and Lidl in the UK--which focus on selling groceries for as cheap as they can, Tesco Express in the UK offers more mid-range prices, and is more upscale in its positioning and store design.

The Tesco irony: While Tesco if trying to get its fledgling small-format Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market venture off the ground in the U.S.--and is garnering lots of attention for launching a small store competitive challenge in California, Arizona and Nevada to large-format supermarkets like Safeway, Ralphs' Wal-Mart Supercenters, Albertsons and others--its large supermarkets and even larger hypermarkets (along with its smaller Express stores) are about to get the biggest challenge they've seen to date. That challenge is coming from Aldi and Lidl--the German invaders--both of which have embarked on massive growth plans in the UK, designed to take market share from Tesco.

Aldi plans to open at least 50 new no frills, small-format discount grocery stores a year in the UK for the next few years. By the end of 2008, Aldi should have a t least 400 of the discount grocery markets in the UK. The German grocer says it plans to build at least 1,500 total stores under this fast-growth plan.

Tony Blain, Aldi's UK managing director in charge of buying, recently said the German grocer could very well have a store in every town in the UK in the next 15 -to-20 years. Blain also said Tesco is the most vulnerable UK chain in terms of Aldi's growth plan. "If you've got someone with 30% of the market [Tesco], you can assume most of our growth is going to come from that," he says.

Aldi also has launched a massive growth initiative in the U.S. The grocer recently announced that beginning this year, it will build about 100 new stores a year in the USA over the next five years. The grocer already has almost 900 Aldi small-format, discount grocery markets in the U.S. The stores are located in the Midwest and eastern portions of the country.

Lidl also has been building and opening its no frills, small-format discount grocery markets in the UK at a fast pace, and plans to not only continue but to excelerate that new store opening pace. the grocer currently has more than 450 stores in the UK and has said it plans to double that amount in the next few years.

Tesco is very worried about these two German invaders and their no frills, little discount grocery stores. So concerned is giant Tesco that it's set up its own version of a mock German small-foramt grocery store in an old warehouse facility in the UK which is owned by Tesco's founder.

Tesco is using this mock Aldi or Lidl to test merchandising strategies and related concepts. It's also highly believed in UK grocery industry circles that Tesco is using this mock store--like they did in the U.S. in developing the Fresh & Easy format--to create its own version of a small-format, no frills discount grocery store on the order of Aldi and Lidl.

The key to Aldi and Lidl's success in the UK and elsewhere throughout the world is that the grocers use a super low-cost model across the board. The retailers first try to find the cheapest sites to build their stores, and often buy empty retail buildings at a discount and then remodel the buildings to fit their store formats.

Since the store-format is small (average 15,000 square feet), it also costs less to build (or remodel an existing building) than the typical supermarket, which can range from 35,000 -to- 70,000 square feet, or a hypermarket, which is anywhere from 100,000 -to 200,000-plus square feet.

The small-format stores' require less shelving, refrigeration cases, checkout stands and the like. Additionally, because the stores' are no frills in design, the design costs also are lower than those of an even semi-upscale supermarket. Further, the small-format stores are low-overhead: less montly fixed costs for energy and water use for example, lower property taxes and more.

Aldi and Lidl also are able to extend their respective low-cost models to the all important area of labor. The no frills, discount grocery stores often have no more than 4 or 5 employees working in them at any given time.

Store employees multi-task, stocking shelves when not running the cash register, doing clean-up work when needed, and working in mutiple departments, unlike larger-format supermarkets, which have seperate produce department and meat department clerks, for example. Aldi and Lidl store managers also are working managers. They stock shelves, work at the checkstands and do other day-to-day tasks, along with managing store operations and employees.

Lastly, the two German discount grocers employ this super low-cost model in product buying. Private label grocery product development plays a major part in operations and merchandising. And both grocers are very good at it. The retailers' obtain the lowest cost of goods possible from suppliers, have extremely cost-effective packaging operations, and cut-costs aggressively throughout the entire supply chain.

Aldi and Lidl also buy lots of national brand grocery products and non-foods items on an "in-and-out" basis at steep disounts. (Aldi even makes key buys on items like small appliances, gas energy generators and other hard goods, and sells them a super-low prices.) The grocers' agree to buy scores of truckloads of an item from a supplier in return for getting a very low cost. The retailers' then create massive displays of these items in their stores and sell the goods for low prices, making only a small gross margin, but selling a huge volume of product.

Both grocers--especially Aldi--have recently increased the amount and variety of specialty, gourmet, natural and organic grocery items they sell in their UK stores as well, as a way to reach more upper-end shoppers.

The stores' offer these items a deep disounts. For example, Aldi recently offerred fresh, whole Canadian Lobsters for sale at about 40% less than the UK's leading supermarkets. There was a stampede of shoppers to Aldi stores to buy the Lobsters, which the grocer sold out of in a couple days. Aldi recently was said to offer the best quality food items among all grocery retailers in a UK consumer survey.

So, as British food retailing invader Tesco struggles to achieve success with its new, small-format Fresh & Easy grocery store venture in the highly competitive Western U.S. market, two German invaders--Aldi and Lidl--are posing a major challenge to the British-based, global retailer's dominance at home in the UK.

The irony of that fact is, Aldi and Lidl are launching their respective challenges against Tesco with small-format grocery stores, which are similar in a number of ways to the Fresh & Easy grocery markets Tesco is using to launch its competitive challenge against U.S. home-grown, larger-format supermarkets with.

Tesco Creating Another New Store Format: No Frills, Small Format, Price-Impact

Tesco, parent company of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, is back at the retail food store format drawing board, this time creating a new, small format, no frills, deep discount store designed to fend-off competition in Britain from German grocers' Aldi and Lidl's small format, deep-discount grocery markets, which have been growing in numbers and popularity in Britain, and taking market share away from Tesco's supermarkets.

London's Telegraph.co.uk reports today that Tesco, the third-biggest retailer in the world, began last summer converting an old warehouse owned by Jack Farmer, the retailer's founder, into a mock German discount store. The reason: To design a no frills, small format, limted assortment, discount format of its own to counter the Aldi and Lidl threat in the UK.

This is the same process Tesco used to develop its Fresh & Easy, small format grocery market chain in the U.S. The retailer acquired an old warehouse in the U.S., and used it to tinker around with various design and merchandising concepts until it arrived at what is today the Fresh & Easy store format.

In fact, according to our reading of the Telegraph.co.uk story--and some digging around over the phone with sources we did today--it sounds like the new Tesco small format, deep discount store prototype the company is currently working on might be at least one part Fresh & Easy.

That part is the low-price leader, basic grocery aspect of Fresh & Easy stores. Fresh & Easy stores open in the U.S. offer a limited assortment of private label and national brand basic groceries at very low prices--thus far lower overall prices than the supermarkets in the stores' trading areas in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

In fact, the format under design might be very similar to Fresh & Easy overall. Aldi and Lidl stores in Britain sell a limited assortment of high-end, specialty and natural/organic groceries and prepared foods in addition to basic groceries. The stores offer these upscale items at a super-low price as well. This is similar to Fresh & Easy stores, which combine the basic grocery concept in the stores with an extensive offering of fresh, prepared foods at reasonable prices, along with a limited selection of specialty, natural and organic groceries priced at a discount.

Aldi has about 900 stores in the U.S. They are small format, no frills stores similar to those the German grocer operates in Europe and elsewhere throughout the world. However, unlike the Tesco Fresh & Easy stores, (and unlike Aldi stores in the UK) Aldi's U.S. grocery markets don't offer much in the way of prepared foods or specialty and natural/organic grocery items. Lidl doesn't currently have any stores in the U.S.

Read the Telegraph.co.uk article, "Tesco Moves to Counter Aldi and Lidl," here.

Sidebar News: Tesco isn't waiting for its new, no frills, small discount store format to be finished: This week the retailer will begin to match Aldi's and Lidl's prices on over 2,000 items in its Tesco supermarkets in Britain. The giant retailer also just launched 300 no-frills Lidl and Aldi-style products, with another 200 items on the way. Read more here.