Sainsbury’s Mike Coupe: Aldi and Lidl are starting to look like “conventional” supermarkets
Mike Coupe must be feeling confident about Sainsbury's progress in the grocery price wars.
The supermarket boss, who yesterday revealed strong results, appears to be trolling Aldi and Lidl, telling Mumsnetters yesterday that the German discounters were "increasingly looking like conventional supermarkets".
Speaking at Mumstock, a conference about marketing to mums, he told the audience that the price gap between the big four and these upstarts was narrowing.
"The biggest barrier for us to overcome is the price difference between the discounters and the major supermarkets, although that’s come down a lot in the last couple of years," he said. "And you’ve seen the growth of the discounters slow quite dramatically in the last year."
Coupe also knocked the two group's ranges, noting that Aldi "only" has 2,500.
"The reason that even today the discounters only have 10 per cent of the UK market is because many people shop a much, much larger portfolio of products," he is reported to have said.
His comments came as Sainsbury's proudly trumpeted the fact it had maintained market share at a time when Tesco, Morrisons and Asda have all been losing ground to…er… Aldi and Lidl.