Belgian supermarkets team up to supply hospitals

Belgian supermarket chains Delhaize and Colruyt are joining forces in order to supply hospital staff with grocery deliveries, which will be free of charge. They invite competitors to join the scheme and widen its scope.

Divided

Both chains say they want to “give hospital staff the opportunity to have groceries delivered near to where they work”. Colruyt started the initiative with a hospital in Brussels and one in Leuven, Delhaize now joins the project with a hospital in Antwerp.

Delhaize says this first hospital is a test, and it hopes to “be able to add more hospitals to the project as soon as possible”. In order to ensure the deliveries have sufficient customers, the chains have agreed to divide the hospitals among the companies involved: each hospital will have its dedicated supermarket, which has a monopoly on that hospital. The chains hope that more retailers will join the project, so that as many hospitals as possible can be included in the project.

These strange times bear fruit to strange alliances: last week, the German branch of McDonald’s already agreed to outsource some of its staff to Aldi.