How Ahold Delhaize and its brands are investing to make everyday products more affordable

June 8, 2026 – Rising costs, persistent inflation and ongoing economic uncertainty continue to strain household budgets, shaping consumer spending on food across our brands’ markets. More than ever, customers are making careful choices about what they buy, prioritizing value and rewarding retailers who earn their trust. That’s why all the different levers to achieve affordability remain a central focus of Ahold Delhaize’s Growing Together strategy – and a key way our local brands are strengthening customer loyalty.
 

Expanding our own‑brand products ranges
Own brands are one of the most important tools our brands have to help families access quality products at competitive prices. They offer greater control over the supply chain so they can better control costs and optimize sourcing and packaging. They also enable our brands to use their deep knowledge of customers to create products that meet local needs.  

Our brands continue to grow and expand these differentiating ranges – striving to reach our goal of making own brands around 45% of total food sales by 2028. In 2025, our brands introduced 1,100 new own-brand products in the U.S. and 1,450 in Europe, including 250 entry-priced products. Each of our European brands offers over 900 Price Favorite products, providing customers with greater choice and value. Own brands continue to outpace the rest of the products in our brands’ stores in terms of sales and volume, showing they are well appreciated by customers.


 
Price investments in the U.S.
By strategically lowering prices on key products and broadening their everyday low-price assortments, our brands are building customer trust, driving volume growth and increasing market share. Our Ahold Delhaize USA brands are launching their second round of price investments this year, toward a total of $1 billion planned between 2025 and 2028. Some local examples of how the U.S. brands are lowering prices to make groceries more affordable include:

• Stop & Shop has been lowering everyday prices across key states and will expand these price investments across its full fleet of stores by the end of 2026.
• The GIANT Company has launched its “Simply Low” campaign that includes price investments, particularly on own-brand products, to keep groceries more affordable.
• Giant Food has lowered the price of hundreds of products across its own-brand portfolio through its “Fresh Low Prices” initiative.
   

Saving to invest for customers
Through our company-wide Save for Our Customers program, we aim to save €5 billion between 2025 and 2028, to be reinvested into our winning customer value proposition, technology and sustainability agenda to fuel future growth. The program focuses on areas such as sourcing, simplification initiatives, automation, and further leveraging the power of data and AI across Ahold Delhaize. As part of it, our brands have local savings initiatives in place, such as Buy Better at Albert Heijn and Delhaize, which expands customers’ access to quality food by generating savings through tailored purchasing strategies, value chain optimization and synergies between the two brands.

In 2025, we achieved €1.3 billion in cost savings through the program, to fund all the things that create value for customers, including smart technology, modern and inviting stores, more sustainable refrigeration and expanded electric vehicle fleets for online deliveries. We expect to save at least another €1.25 billion in 2026.



Tailoring promotions to create more value
Our brands’ loyalty programs are increasingly helping customers access offers that are personalized to their needs, further driving value and helping make shopping more affordable. Each year, our brands provide billions of tailored offers to customers – and they continue to optimize the way they deliver these offers, ensuring they are increasingly relevant and make it easier for customers to save in ways that fit their daily lives. Our U.S. brands delivered over 14.2 billion personalized offers in 2025, up a whopping 18% over the previous year.

We aim to reach 80% omnichannel loyalty sales penetration by 2028 – and are transforming our loyalty programs to get there. All our European brands have recently launched new or enhanced digital features as part of their loyalty programs, such as a new My Albert app in the Czech Republic and an award-winning AB Plus program in Greece. Albert Heijn rolled out an AI-powered assistant, Steijn, that is helping customers figure out what to make for dinner by suggesting personalized recipes and step-by-step guidance – making it easier for people to save money by eating at home.
 

Sourcing together across our European brands
Sourcing together is another way our brands can save money that can be invested into affordable prices for customers. Our European brands, in particular, put a strong focus on shared sourcing and are working to expand these efforts, with a focus on own-brand products. By harmonizing own-brand products – standardizing in areas like packaging, sourcing and production – they are able to create better economies of scale and a faster path to innovation. In 2025, our European brands expanded their joint sourcing portfolio with 167 new products, including 100 items in their Price Favorite range. 

During the first half of this year, our brands across the Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia and Greece identified hundreds of key value items where they see further opportunities to harmonize products and take better advantage of our scale. These staple products are purchased frequently by our customers, so the ability to source together and lower prices on products like these helps make the average shopping basket more affordable.

In addition, our brands in Europe have worked with strategic purchasing alliances, such as Eurelec and Coopernic, for years, leveraging our scale to deliver value to customers while maintaining strong relationships with suppliers.

For more information on how our European brands leverage shared sourcing, see our recent article on ‘Joint sourcing for more affordable, healthy and sustainable food in Europe’.
 

Building trust – and a stronger business
All our brands’ efforts to lower prices and deliver better value show customers that we’re there for them – that we value their loyalty and are earning their trust. And the results prove making everyday food more affordable is not only good for our customers, it supports the long-term resilience and growth of all our brands.