In 2022, Ahoid Delhaize’s Save for Our Customers program was a direct assault on inflation. The grocer retailer took some of the brunt of higher costs so that it could lessen the blow to consumers. The result was a record-breaking savings of 979 million Euros.
“While the magnitude of inflation made it impossible to avoid raising prices, our brands were able to absorb part of the cost increases relating to energy, transport and labor by accelerating their work on our Save for Our Customers programs,” said Ahoid Delhaize CEO Frans Muller, who noted the war in Ukraine made it especially difficult for European stores, and it even made an impact on stores in the U.S. “This enabled us to continue to invest in better customer propositions and keep shelf prices as low as possible.”
For the year, net sales (15.1%) and net income (13.4%) were both up for Ahoid Delhaize, and net consumer online sales jumped 8.9%.
Building a deeper digital relationship with consumers falls right in line with Ahoid Delhaize’s strategy moving forward. The retailer introduced four priorities in 2022, and conquering the digital arena was at the top. Leading the transformation to a healthy and sustainable food system, creating an ecosystem of great local brands that lead together, and continuing to accelerate the company’s omnichannel transformation to be the best local operators and enable customers to shop whenever and wherever they want are the other three goals for the three-year plan.
Ahoid Delhaize also put together additional revenue streams last year, including creating an end-to-end, in-house retail media business through its Peapod Digital Labs.
“As our digital and technology agenda becomes more important, and more costly, we want to spread investments over more sales by leveraging our scale,” said Muller.
Some Ahoid Delhaize achievements in 2022 include:
- The company provided humanitarian aid to civilians affected by the war in Ukraine
- Ahoid Delhaize publishesd its second Human Rights Report
- Stop & Shop announced it will invest $140 million in its New York City stores to improve the shopping experience for customers
- Delhaize launched Little Lions campaign to support customer purchasing power by highlighting 500 basic own-brand products at more competitive prices
- In November, Ahoid Delhaize announced Food Lion had reached one decade of consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales growth
