Lidl GB has today opened a new store on Tottenham Court Road in central London.
In response to the need to provide access to food supplies and essentials at this time, Lidl is delivering on its commitment to serve local communities, despite unprecedented circumstances.
The store, which is the supermarket’s most central London store, neighbours University College Hospital and will serve frontline NHS staff workers as well as the wider Central London community.
The store will be open between 7am and 10pm Monday to Saturday and 11am and 5pm on Sunday, providing a big window of opportunity for workers to get food supplies. And despite its central London location, the store has a 1,380m² sales area stocking the discounter’s full range of products.
Lidl has been liaising closely with University College Hospital management to understand how to best meet NHS worker needs and will be donating snacks and fruit and veg directly to NHS workers to help keep them fuelled throughout their long shifts.
This builds on Lidl GB’s partnership with the Royal Voluntary Service, through which it donated thousands of fresh fruit and vegetable boxes to NHS staff across Great Britain to help provide frontline health workers with fresh, high quality and highly nutritious produce.
Lidl GB CEO, Christian Härtnagel, said, “We know how important our role is at this time in helping keep the nation fed. Through the opening of this new store on Tottenham Court Road, we’re proud that we can provide the local community and frontline workers at University College Hospital with access to the essential products they need, at affordable prices.
“We would like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all frontline workers for their efforts and commitment, including our incredible team working at the new store, who join the rest of our workforce in doing a truly amazing job during these extremely challenging times.”
The supermarket will also be providing the local charity Rhythms of Life with surplus food from the store, working to support homeless people in the local community. This will be delivered through Lidl’s longstanding Feed it Back scheme in partnership with Neighbourly, working to help some of the most vulnerable in society access high quality food.
The news follows Lidl’s recent announcement that it has rolled out customer food donation boxes in stores nationwide, so every customer visiting a Lidl store has the opportunity to donate food directly to local community foodbanks.
Lidl has also donated £300k to Neighbourly’s COVID Emergency Fund, to help charities access food and funding immediately during this time of need.
Today’s opening of Lidl’s most central London store is part of the supermarket’s £1.45bn investment in its expansion across Great Britain in 2019 and 2020 and a £500m investment in London by 2025.
Plans in London specifically include over 40 new stores, creating around 1,500 new jobs for the capital, in addition to its new HQ in Tolworth, South West London, a new distribution centre in Luton and the expansion of its Belvedere distribution centre.