Food retailer tegut ... recorded around 2% more customer visits in the financial year 2018 than in the year before. This was despite the fact its that sales area remained the same overall. The average customer bonus could also be increased. Net sales of the tegut ... Group increased by 2.7% to € 1.035 billion (2017: € 1.008 billion). Area productivity increased by 1.9% in 2018 (2017: 0.9%). The share of organic foods and products in total sales has grown as well, from 25.4% to 26.0%. tegut... also sold more fair trade products and locally grown food.
tegut ... managing Director Thomas Gutberlet is satisfied with these financial results: "Our strategy of offering consumers good food with a focus on freshness, organic and regionality has paid off with regard to 
our goals for 2018. It also shows that we are on the right track regarding our course for sustainable management and growth. We regularly receive feedback from our customers on the fact that our range stands out from the competition through numerous organic qualities, our high-quality proprietary brands and many other brand articles," says Gutberlet. "With this concept, we want to continue to provide impulses within the trade in the future."
Energy efficiency and less packaging
In 2018, the company based in Fulda -in the state of Hesse- consistently pursued its sustainability strategy. In order to avoid waste packaging, tegut ... was the first dealer in Germany to introduce packaging-free shopping at its service counters in 2018. Customers can bring their own containers when buying meat, sausages, cheese, fish and antipasti. These containers are then filled by specialist staff, thus dispensing with disposable plastic packaging. In the fruit & vegetable assortment, there was a continual switch from plastic packaging to recycled paper, and environmentally friendly reusable bags were introduced.
"We continue our focus on resource-saving and sustainable use of packaging and renouncing superfluous packaging," affirms Gutberlet. The tegut ... boss also thinks that other supermarket chains took up initiatives such as reusable packaging or packaging-free shopping at the fresh food counter last year after tegut ... paved the way there.
According to a study by the EHI Retail Institute in Cologne, which was conducted in 2018, tegut ... is among the front runners of twelve German supermarket chains in terms of energy-efficiency and economical use of electricity on the sales floor. Tegut ... finds itself 21% below the average of German supermarkets with regard to electricity consumption, as the company has been covering this for a full 100% with green electricity for years. The relevant numbers are linked to the specific power consumption in kWh per m2 sales area in the supermarket, which is used for cooling and lighting. Here, tegut ... uses CO2 refrigeration technology as standard, with which food is cooled in a climate-neutral manner. Economical LED lighting systems have been chosen as well.
Set course for further expansion
Six new stores were opened in the past financial year: Frankfurt, Mainz, Fellbach-Schmieden, Weimar, Stuttgart and Waiblingen. Six smaller stores and shops were closed for reasons of economy. The number of tegut ... markets stood at 273 at the end of 2018, which corresponds to the number of branches in the previous year. "We want to continue growing in 2019, continuing our expansion, with a focus on the southern federal states," affirms Thomas Gutberlet. Tegut... is planning eight new openings this year.
Within the context of its e-commerce strategy, tegut ... continues its cooperation with Amazon: "Through this cooperation we achieved a positive result in 2018," says Gutberlet. On Amazon, tegut ... can deliver around 5,200 items, including 2,000 organic food articles.
With its Amazon presence, existing since the spring of 2017, the Fulda-based dealer is strengthening its brand awareness beyond its home territory, making its products available where there is no such thing as a local market. "Amazon helps us to find new customers who will later also buy in tegut ... markets, in our future expansion areas," says Gutberlet.
Source: tegut...