Lidl bought its name from a retired teacher to avoid 'black market'
Dieter Schwarz had an awkward problem when he opened discount shops in the 1970s: his family name would turn them into Schwarz-Markt, German for black market. He wanted his father's old partner's name, Lidl, but the law blocked it. Then he read about a retired schoolteacher and painter named Ludwig Lidl, and paid him 1,000 marks for the name.
The Lidl connection went back a long way. Anton Lidl had run an exotic-fruit business in Heilbronn since at least 1858, and in 1930 Josef Schwarz became a partner, renamed it Lidl and Schwarz, and turned it into a food wholesaler. The first discount store opened in 1973, openly copying rival Aldi. Schwarz pulled slow sellers off the shelves ruthlessly and kept shops small to save money, and by 1977 there were 33 of them.
The no-frills method is still recognisable. Goods sit in their delivery cartons so customers take items directly from the box, and an empty carton is simply swapped. A store runs on a team of around 17 to 25 people who all do everything, from 5 a.m. deliveries to baking. Cashiers are expected to scan at least 30 items a minute, and shoppers are nudged to pack at a separate shelf so a single checkout can keep the queue moving.
Britain went its own way. Lidl arrived in 1994, and the British arm under Ronny Gottschlich spent heavily on marketing, paid a living wage above the legal requirement and added upmarket Christmas lines. The approach grew sales but strained profits and caused friction with headquarters, and he left abruptly in 2016. Even so, in May 2026 Lidl overtook Morrisons to become Britain's fifth-largest supermarket chain, one place behind Aldi. It opened in the United States in 2017 and had 173 American stores by 2024.
Behind the shops sits a sprawling supply machine. Lidl belongs to the Schwarz Group, whose sister companies make its own-label goods, including a chocolate plant that now turns out 100,000 bars an hour. Since 2022 it has even run a shipping line with eleven container ships bringing goods from Asia.
Source: Lidl
