Albert Heijn and Karwei will start selling roses with proceeds going to the battle against cancer. The sale begins 29 August and finishes 4 September when the annual bike ride Ride for the Roses is being held around Aalsmeer. Both retailers hope to raise up to one hundred thousand euros during the week.

Ride for the Roses is an event taking place in several countries since 1997. The event was founded by American cyclist Lance Armstrong. Proceeds will benefit professor Floor van Leeuwen's research on the side effects of chemo and radio therapy on patients suffering from Hodgkin's syndrome.

A number of Albert Heijn stores last week suffered out of stock-problems due to a logistics malfunction within all distribution centers. Approximately one hundred stores had empty shelves. The website GeenStijl.nl intercepted an internal e-mail from within Albert Heijn explaining that the re stocking of stores could not begin until Monday.

The cause of the disturbance appears to be 'systematic and not confined to one distribution center', a spokesperson for Albert Heijn said. The company refused comment on the monetary damages.

The mayor of Veendam in the North of the Netherlands has personally sealed off a shopping center in his town.He went though this unusual act to prevent the local Albert Heijn owned by franchiser Jan Bun to continue to illegally open his store on Sundays. It the store had opened after this, those involved could have received a 19.000 euro fine or even faced jail time of up to two years.

The battle for the Sunday in Veendam and The Netherlands as a whole reaches a new peak with this incident. In the Netherlands one supermarket per 15.000 inhabitants of a municipality can open its doors at 16.00 hours on Sundays. In Veendam AH-competitor Jumbo received the permit. Albert Heijn did not agree with this resulting in a year of illegal openings and a major showdown between retailer and local government.

The store owned caved in this time and ended the illegal openings. Several hundred customers turned up to shop on Sunday.

Supermarktetchain Lidl will start selling holidays in The Netherlands. The discount chain has launched a special website and will promote the service though promotion materials in its 350 stores. The selling of holidays happens in cooperation with travel companies Stip Reizen, Sundio and a German business.

Lidl offers a mix of city trips, tours and individual holidays. 'We sell the best quality against the lowest price, just like with our other offerings', a spokesperson for Lidl said. The Dutch Lidl-stores follow the example of Lidl in Germany that has been succesful offering holidays for a number of years.

  CVC Capital no longer rules out the selling of the C1000 real estate. Experts estimate the store buildings could fetch over 400 million euros, supermarket magazine Distrifood reports.

Last week it was announced C1000 had split its activities in two divisions, including with the real estate. This fuelled rumours of a future sell off for the store. Earlier in the year six out of eight distribution centers had already been sold off. Around that time C1000 still flatly denied it had plans to sell off the rest of the real estate, because the stores were strategicaly to important to C1000. Now this denial has changed to the more neutral ‘confirm nor deny’.

The value of the owned stores is estimated to be 400 million euros, with real estate investors favorite to snap them up.

Ruim 120 ontevreden Delhaize-franchisenemers hebben zich verenigd in een vzw om bij Delhaize samen hun grieven te uiten over steeds dalende brutomarges. Volgens de zelfstandige supermarktuitbaters worden ze vanuit de centrale zelfs gedwongen om bepaalde producten met verlies te verkopen. Klopt absoluut niet, reageert Delhaize echter.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn has extended its customer care to social medium Twitter. The company has put a team in place in its headquarters in Zaandam to respond fast to questions and complaints by customers on Twitter. Until now each store was allowed its own policy regarding new media.

Albert Heijn follows in the footsteps of amongst others the big cable companies in The Netherlands. Research has shown customers who lodge a complaint through social media react very positively to a response from the business involved.

Today until 17.00 hours about six questions or complaints were dealt with, including a complaint about long waiting times at the checkouts and the absence of certain products during a store visit.

Oil & Vinegar is nearly back at the number of stores the chain had before the bankruptcy in 2007.The chain opened 20 stores last year and is on pace to open 15 to 20 new stores during 2011, including a return to Amsterdam.

Oil & Vinegar sells a select assortiment of products related to its name and culinary presents. It was one of the success stories of Dutch retail at the start of the century with rapid international growth. Too rapid as it turned out and the chain ran into serious financial problems. New management bought the chain from the curator and the chain is now nearly back to the 110 stores it had before the troubles, limiting its territory to Holland, Belgium and Germany.

Last week the chain opened a store in Brussels, followed by Berlin in two weeks. Amsterdam will get two new stores in September. The last store in the Dutch capital closed its doors in 2006.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn will during the next two weeks tour the country with trucks with special offers. Three locations a day will be visited with sales happening in the parking lot in front of the supermarkets. The tours are part of the month long Hamster Weeks to lure consumers back to the supermarkets after their holidays.

To Hamster in Dutch means buy a lot of goods, the Hamster Weeks have been a traditional offering for Albert Heijn over the last number of years. The trucks will sell goods that are normally not available in the store at a heavy discount. Goods will include Jamie Oliver cooking books and big packs of Ariel washing powder.

Customers get a discount coupon for in store with every ten euros spent at the Hamster trucks.

 Belgium's leading Green salad manufacturer Starmeal is to open a store in The Netherlands. The company, which was launched in The Netherlands in april, has rented 330 square meters of shopping space in the FOZ Building on the Gustav Mahlerlaan in Amsterdam, real estate magazine Vastgoedmarkt reports.

Starmeal already has a flagshipstore in Antwerp. Starmeal products are already on sale in The Netherlands at supermarket chains Jumbo and Plus and petrol stations Esso and Total.