Aldi scoops Grocer of the Year Award at Grocer Golds

Aldi has pulled off a major coup at this year’s Grocer Gold Awards by beating Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Ocado to the Grocer of the Year Award.

The discounter took the top gong in last night’s prestigious ceremony at the Guildhall, London, in front of an audience of industry leaders. See the full list of winners here.

The win follows Aldi’s triumph at The Grocer Own Label Awards in May, when it seized a record-breaking 16 gold medals for its own-label produce.

“It’s a fantastic recognition of the hard work our employees have put in over the last year, both in stores and in our director and buying teams,” said Aldi joint group MD Matthew Barnes.

Fellow GMD Roman Heini added: “It underlines our change from being a top-up shopping destination to being a full shop destination.”

Read this: Aldi - “We are Discounter 2.0”

Sainsbury’s also celebrated a fistful of wins, bagging awards for Online Retailer of the Year, Green Retailer of the Year, and Consumer Initiative of the Year, for its Paralympics sponsorship. In addition, it picked up the Availability and Customer Service awards in the Grocer 33 mystery shopper survey.

“If you look at the way the business has moved on since we joined in 2004/2005 when availability was a significant Achilles heel, by internal and external measures like the Grocer 33, we are industry leading,” said group commercial director Mike Coupe.

Asda once more took the award for Britain’s Favourite Supermarket, voted for by a panel of consumers, and was crowned the nation’s cheapest supermarket again, claiming the Grocer 33 Price Award for the 16th consecutive year.

It was good night too for Booker, which scooped the Wholesaler of the Year Award and Green Wholesaler of the Year. Its Premier fascia also picked up Symbol Retailer of the Year.

Elsewhere, Mondelez (formerly Kraft) won the Food and Drink Brand of the Year Award for Philadelphia, which has earned plaudits for its cook with ‘Philly’ campaign, and enjoyed success with its chocolate-flavoured spin off.

Carling Zest, a 2.8% abv citrus beer brewed by Molson Coors, took the Alcoholic Drinks Brand of the Year prize, having reignited interest in the lower-abv category.

Many of the Gold awards are based on exclusive research conducted by The Grocer, while the remainder are decided by a panel of judges drawn from leading industry figures. The awards launched in 2003 with the aim of highlighting major achievements in grocery.

For a complete round-up of this year’s awards, see this week’s edition of The Grocer.

For more information, see the Grocer Gold Awards website.

Here is a complete list of this year’s winners: