Albert Heijn expands home deliveries to Belgium

Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn is to expand its home delivery service to Belgium in the next few months. The Antwerp region will be the first to trial the expanded service, but the retailer already looks further…

“Ambitious”

Currently, Dutch Albert Heijn customers can get their online orders delivered at home, but Belgian customers still have to collect their orders at a pick-up point. This will change soon: in a press release, the chain says it “will be – even more – there where the customer wants us to be. General manager Belgium Raf Van den Heuvel says his company is “ambitious in its growth, which we want to realise by opening strong new stores and by expanding our online offer.”

The service will be trialled in Antwerp, but Van den Heuvel aims to expand it sooner rather than later – based on customers’ feedback on where they want to see the service being implemented. Exact timings, fees and more details have yet to be made public, but the manager says his company “will learn from the feedback from customers. That is how we have grown in our physical stores; that is also how we will handle home deliveries.”

Van den Heuvel admits that his company is rather late with this offer: “So far, our focus has indeed been on expansion with bricks. In the future, we will combine expanding in bricks and clicks: home deliveries can boost our online story in Belgium.”