GERMANY: Rewe prepares for Amazon’s move into food | Progresiv
Germany's second-biggest supermarket group Rewe is investing heavily in grocery ecommerce even though it does not expect to turn a profit soon, as it braces for Amazon to expand its food delivery service. 
"We know that we will still not work profitably for several years, but it is not blowing money," Rewe Chief Executive Alain Caparros told Reuters in an interview.
"The customer is changing. They want to have it easy and we have to prepare ourselves for that. The online customer is our opportunity to become the number one in Germany. The train is leaving the station and I want to be on it."
Rewe, a cooperative that runs 15,000 stores in 12 countries in Europe, is Germany's second-biggest supermarket group behind privately-owned Edeka and ahead of Metro and the Schwarz Group that owns the Lidl discount chain.
While online sales of books, electronics and clothes are booming in Germany, grocery ecommerce has been slow to take off as the country has a high density of food stores and the dominant discounters Aldi and Lidl have little incentive to push loss-making deliveries given their already thin margins.
However, big players such as Rewe and Metro are now expanding delivery services, and start-ups funded by the likes of ecommerce group Rocket Internet are also proliferating.
Rewe’s Caparros said Amazon - which already delivers groceries in a handful of U.S. cities - had already secured logistics sites in Germany to expand its "Fresh" service to its second-biggest market after the United States. "When they come, they will come with a big bang," he said.
Amazon has said it plans to keep expanding in Germany, including eventually delivering fresh groceries, without giving a timetable.
Caparros said Rewe now delivered groceries in 56 German cities and towns and was continuing to expand. Rewe, which also runs the Penny discount chain and Toom DIY stores, saw sales grow 2.9% to 51 billion euros in 2013. (www.reuters.com)
