There’s few shopping triumphs that bring quite as much joy to the soul as a budget buy from the Middle of Lidl or an Aldi SpecialBuys event, which was why we were beyond thrilled to know there’s another cut-price supermarket about to make its mark in the UK.
Drumroll please – say hello to Mere, a Russian discount retailer that claims to be up to 30% cheaper than the likes of Aldi and Lidl. Oo-er.
Mere is owned by Svetofor which has 3,200 stores worldwide, and as of 2021, they’ll finally be bringing their bargains to British shores, starting with a store in Preston, Lancashire.
There’s also three more supermarkets in the UK already in the pipeline, with locations including Mold in north Wales, Caldicot in south Wales and Castleford in West Yorkshire.
Pavels Antonovs, Head of Buying at Mere UK, told The Grocer: “We are the gap in the market. We don’t have any competitors – our model is no service and no marketing.”
“On 13 March, we opened a store in Latvia and the queue outside was 570 people. In Germany, when we opened our first store, it had been bought out [of stock] in two days” he added.
The stores will be 10,000 sq ft and include a walk-in chiller room and huge freezer, and will feel more like a large warehouse than a traditional supermarket.
No word yet on whether there will be seasonal aisles like Aldi and Lidl, but if there’s a Mere UK store opening near you, we absolutely want to see what goodies you find…
Leave a Reply