Lidl

In 1930, Josef Schwarz became a partner in a Heilbronn-based company named Südfrüchte Großhandlung Lidl & Co. The company had been established by Anton Lidl since at least 1858 under the name A. Lidl & Cie, and specialised in the sale of exotic fruit. Schwarz renamed the company Lidl & Schwarz KG and expanded it into a food wholesaler.

In 1977, under his son Dieter Schwarz, the Schwarz Group began to focus on discount markets, larger supermarkets, and cash and carry wholesale markets. Dieter did not want to use the name Schwarz-Markt (lit. 'black market') and wanted to use the name of his father's former business partner, A. Lidl, but legal reasons prevented him from using that name for his discount stores. When he discovered a newspaper article about a painter and retired schoolteacher Ludwig Lidl, he bought the rights to the name from him for 1,000 German marks.

The Lidl trademark and the two sister companies are part of the Schwarz Group, the fifth-largest retailer in the world with sales of €104.3 billion (2018).

The first Lidl discount store was opened in 1973, copying the Aldi concept. Schwarz rigorously removed merchandise that did not sell from the shelves, and cut costs by keeping the size of the retail outlets as small as possible. By 1977, the Lidl chain comprised 33 discount stores.

Lidl opened its first UK store in 1994. Its grocery market share in the UK was 8.1% in June 2025. In May 2026, Lidl overtook Morrisons to become the fifth largest supermarket chain in Great Britain, with an 8.6% market share, behind fellow German discount-focused chain Aldi.

Sven Seidel was appointed CEO of the company in March 2014, after the previous CEO Karl-Heinz Holland stepped down. Holland had been chief executive since 2008 but left due to undisclosed "unbridgeable" differences over future strategy. Seidel stepped down from his position in February 2017 after Manager Magazin reported he had fallen out of favour with Klaus Gehrig, who has headed the Schwarz Group since 2004. Seidel was succeeded as CEO by Danish businessman Jesper Højer, previously head of Lidl's international buying operation.

In June 2015, the company announced it would establish a United States headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Lidl has major distribution centers in Mebane, North Carolina, and Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The company initially focused on opening locations in East Coast states, between Pennsylvania and Georgia, and as far west as Ohio. In June 2017, Lidl opened its first stores in the United States in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and other mid-Atlantic cities. The company planned to open a total of one hundred U.S. stores by the summer of 2018. In November 2018, Lidl announced plans to acquire 27 Best Market stores in New York and New Jersey. In December 2018, Lidl opened its first location in New York City, in the Staten Island Mall. The company continued to expand throughout the eastern U.S., with over 100 stores by the end of 2020. In August 2020, Lidl announced that it planned to open another 50 stores in the U.S. by the end of 2021. As of 2024 there were 173 stores in the US.

In 2021, Lidl planned to phase out the selling of cigarettes in all its Dutch stores by 2024 as part of the "smoke-free generation".

Stores

LD Stiftung operates the stores in Germany and Lidl Stiftung GmbH & Co. KG for international stores. Lidl is present with stores in around 32 countries.

Producing own brands

Lidl does not produce anything itself, but the sister company "Schwarz Produktion" produces private labels exclusively for Lidl and Kaufland. "MEG Weißenfels GmbH & Co. KG" a sister company of Schwarz Produktion operates five bottling plants in Germany and one in Great Britain. There, the returned plastic bottles are also recycled and new bottles are produced and filled. In March 2009, construction began on a factory for chocolate bars in Übach-Palenberg.

At the start of production in 2012, the hourly output was 1,050 chocolate bars. To date, the hourly output has been increased to 100,000 bars. The chocolate mass is not produced inhouse, but delivered by special trucks. At the same time as the chocolate factory, a plant for packing nuts, nut mixes and dried fruits was built and put into operation in 2010. Nuts and dried fruits are supplied by specialized processors. Parallel to the chocolate factory, a large bakery for frozen dough pieces was built in Übach-Palenberg. These are baked and sold in the bakery shops of the Lidl and Kaufland stores in Europe. The property area in Übach-Palenberg is approximately 250,000 m2 (2,690,978 sq ft) and almost completely built up. In addition, there is a 150,000 m2 (1,614,587 sq ft) plot on the other side of the street. Here is a truck parking area, which is connected to the main building area by a bridge.

A coffee roastery was put into operation in Rheine in March 2022. The annual capacity is 50,000 tons. A nut roastery was built on the same site in 2024. The annual capacity for packaging nuts and dried fruit is 47,000 metric tons. In total, a high-bay warehouse with 52,000 pallet spaces is available here.