© Provided by City AM Lidl has strengthened the pressure on its competitors by remaining the fastest growing retailer against the UK's big four supermarkets of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons.
The German chain achieved a record Christmas in 2020 with overall sales increasing 17.9 per cent in the same four-week December period versus the previous year.
With Christmas favourites driving customer spend, basket sizes increased by just under 25 per cent year-on-year and British households switched £34.7m of spend from all supermarkets.
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Christian Härtnagel, Lidl GB CEO, praised the retailer's growth throughout the pandemic, "despite this Christmas being a difficult time for many across the country."
Christmas treats proved popular, with over 2.7m servings of panettone, 7,000 glasses of mulled wine and almost 17,000 Deluxe mince pies being sold hourly, with the latter range seeing sales rise 22 per cent from 2019.
For the third year in a row, the discounter ran its Christmas Eve donation scheme which saw over 180,000 products, the equivalent of £150,000 worth of food, given to charities and those most in need.
The products were donated via Lidl's Feed it Back initiative, which has resulted in more than 350,000 meals being donated to charities and good causes during the Christmas period.
Expansion
The retailer also continued to proceed with its store expansion programme, opening four new sites in December including in Southampton and Nottingham, creating 120 jobs for communities up and down the country.
This forms part of the supermarket's £1.3 billion investment for the next two years and moves it closer to the target of 1,000 stores by 2023, which it remains on track to achieve.
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