Rewe: Vierlinden closes a store

As soon as the Vierlinden organic supermarket in Eching closed at the end of January 2010, it was deleted from Rewe’s internet site, leaving just 5 Vierlinden stores – three in Cologne, one in Düsseldorf and one in Munich. The managing director of the Rewe subsidiary Bio-Konzept, Christiane Speck, explained to Organic-Market.Info that the location in rural surroundings had not paid off, and that was the reason for the store’s failure. “We misjudged its position,” she said of the store, with its 800 m² of retail area, that opened in this northern suburb of Munich on 8 May 2008. At that time, Speck’s predecessor Elke Rieckh was very happy to have a store outside Nordrhein-Westfalen (see our earlier report).
The premises stood empty for a year after a Rewe store was moved and relocated a kilometer away from the centre of town. Since the local council wanted to keep a store in the town centre, it supported the Vierlinden project.

However, we are now told after the experiment failed that the local population was not sufficiently aware of organic. The number of customers per day when the store opened its doors didn’t increase. So the message is that a conventional supermarket cannot be simply replaced by an organic supermarket, and certainly not if the area is rural.

After some simple renovation work, one of Rewe’s smaller local stores will soon open in Eching. The 18 staff of Vierlinden were all offered alternative employment in the Vierlinden organic supermarket in Munich or in the new store to be opened in Eching, even though a number of contracts of employment were coming to an end.

Christiane Speck said, however, that she was very pleased with the way Temma was developing. This new Rewe concept was created last year and culminated in the opening of an 800 m² store in Cologne-Bayenthal (see our earlier report). In this district in the south of Cologne lives an affluent income group who obviously like shopping in the organic supermarket that is located on the wide Schönhauser Allee and also has its own big car park.

She says that the anticipated number of approximately 1,000 customers a day has been achieved, but they are still refining the concept and making improvements here and there. An example is in the bistro area. Since the 65 places are always occupied at midday, there is now table service and staff to clear away, so that the next guests can take their seats more quickly. A good one hundred people lunch here every day, and she points out that this positive experience of the bistro concept at Temma will be transferred step by step to the Vierlinden stores.

The Temma store in the south of Cologne has obviously proved to be a success – just as Bio-Konzept had planned. “We’re appealing to a lot of conventional customers and a surprisingly high number of older people over 60,” Christiane Speck is pleased to report, and she adds: “Everybody feels at home here.”
From April 2010, they expect to be running a delivery service that will supply  food and ready meals mainly to offices. At present, no further openings of Vierlinden or Temma stores are planned.