No strawberry advertising in March at Aldi – Coop & Co. are not following suit

As soon as spring has started, Swiss retailers are selling strawberries from Spain. At least one of the providers is holding back on advertising in Germany until the start of the season.

Chiara Stäheli / ch media

A campaign at Lidl makes local farmers’ hair stand on end: the retailer is still selling a kilo of strawberries from Spain for just 4 francs until Saturday. At this price, no Swiss farmer can manage sensibly.

Strawberries from southern Europe are not only available from Lidl in March, they have also been in the range of other retailers for a few weeks – and are usually placed prominently in the shops. However, the fact that at this time of year they are mostly watery instead of sweet and more white than red does not seem to bother strawberry customers. Coop, for example, reports that customers need to be able to buy strawberries as early as March and April.

Aldi Suisse is an exception among retailers – at least when it comes to advertising. Strawberries can also be found in Aldi branches in March. However, in order to “strengthen local berry producers”, Aldi has not advertised strawberries in the pre-season since last year. This means that the retailer only advertises strawberries as soon as the first fruits from Swiss production are ripe. That is usually mid-May. With this, one also wants to “promote the seasonal understanding of consumers,” writes Aldi on request.

Competitors want to maintain practice

This step is very much welcomed by customers: “We receive consistently positive feedback.” So is it to be expected that Aldi will soon limit its promotion of cucumbers, tomatoes and other varieties to the Swiss season? It is said that further steps are constantly being examined. However, nothing can be communicated at the moment.

The other large Swiss retailers are already advertising the foreign strawberries in March, as a look at the campaign brochures from Migros, Coop and Lidl shows. They don’t want to do without it in the future either. On request, Migros writes that an adjustment to this practice is “currently not planned”. In addition, Migros will switch to Swiss fruit as soon as locally grown strawberries are available.

Competitor Coop confirms that communication is already “heavy when the fruit and vegetables in question are in season in Switzerland”. And further: “Seasonal fruit from Switzerland has priority at Coop.” However, the assortment is basically based on the needs of the customers. And here, too, “a corresponding demand” was recorded in March.

Both Coop and Migros also refer to their sustainability efforts. Both write that together with the local strawberry producers they have set up an “efficient” (Coop) or “economical” (Migros) irrigation system to reduce water consumption.

Two thirds of the strawberries from abroad

On request, Lidl also points out that strawberries are “extremely popular” with customers, “which is why we are currently offering strawberries from Spain”. There are always campaigns with imported strawberries, “because the producers temporarily produce excess quantities, which would lead to food waste without special offers”. Lidl leaves open questions about the application of strawberries from Spain.

To put this in context: an average Swiss citizen eats around 2.5 kilograms of strawberries per year. More than two thirds of these strawberries come from abroad, as official figures show. While around 7,000 tons of strawberries were produced in Switzerland in 2021, retailers imported almost 15,000 tons from abroad. (aargauerzeitung.ch)

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