Eight discounter stories that surprised us in 2025

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The past 12 months have been transformative for the UK’s discounters, with Lidl and Aldi dominating headlines as they continue to reshape the UK grocery landscape

From Lidl’s surge in market share – overtaking Morrisons in food and drink sales – to Aldi’s bold outsourcing strategy and Lidl’s unexpected TikTok Shop debut, the year has been packed with milestones. Discount retailers have faced challenges too, dealing with head office job cuts and facing regulatory scrutiny.

As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at the key moves, controversies and triumphs that defined the year for Britain’s leading discounters – and what they signal for the battles ahead in 2026.

Lidl leapfrogs Morrisons

After Lidl’s sustained run as the fastest-growing bricks & mortar supermarket, it is only a matter of time before it leapfrogs Morrisons in Worldpanel’s grocery market share leaderboard.

What wasn’t necessarily clear though, was that – in terms of food & drink sales (including fresh, chilled and ambient groceries but not alcohol, household, toiletries or healthcare) – it already had. The Grocer revealed that Worldpanel data showed Lidl’s food & drink market share was 7.7% of the UK market, compared with Morrisons’ 7.6%.

Lidl’s share had shot up from 7.3% in the previous 52 week period, thanks to its sales growing by 10.1%. At the same time, Morrisons’ food & drink share had dropped from 7.8%, with its sales climbing by just 1.5%.

In terms of grocery market share, covering all expenditure through store tills aside from petrol and in-store concessions, Lidl has been on 8.3% versus Morrisons’ 8.4% at various times this year. It’s a margin so thin that headlines about Lidl becoming the UK’s fifth-biggest supermarket are likely already written. The question for the year ahead is when, not if, they will be needed.

Aldi HQ

Source: Aldi

Finance, back office and buying roles were among those affected at Aldi’s Atherstone HQ

Aldi’s outsourcing

February this year saw Aldi join a growing list of retailers making jobs cuts in the wake of a budget that raised employment cost through a hike in employer National Insurance.

How does a business built from the ground up for efficiency manage to shed 350 head office jobs? By outsourcing to workers in India, Romania and Bulgaria, The Grocer revealed.

Aldi outsourced jobs in finance and accounting, procurement and HR, with a focus on administrative roles, according to a source with knowledge of the arrangement.

The plan is understood to have been afoot for about two years, in partnership with US-based professional services and outsourcing company Genpact.

Lidl Dubai chocolate

Source: Lidl’s

Lidl’s Dubai chocolate sold at a rate of 72 bars a minute

Lidl’s TikTok Shop launch

Since it doesn’t even usually sell online, Lidl doesn’t look like the obvious candidate to become the first UK supermarket to launch on TikTok Shop.

But that’s what happened in February, as Lidl staged a flash sale of 3,000 bundles of high-protein products, which sold out in 18 minutes.

It repeated the exercise in March with a limited run of 6,000 Lidl Dubai Style chocolate bars, which sold at a rate of 72 a minute.

For Lidl, it’s a way of getting people in stores and signed up to its loyalty app for when the same products land in aisles, and it comes without the usual high cost of online grocery fulfilment, with orders delivered by courier Evri.

The GCA’s dispute intervention

The Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) made an unprecedented intervention when Aldi was sued by one of its suppliers, by agreeing to advise on evidence in High Court.

The Grocer revealed in October that the court had ordered a stay (halt) to all action, after recording that Aldi and its former sprout and brassica suppliers, John Clappison and Matthew Rawson, had come to a “confidential settlement”.

Lawyers for the farmers had claimed Aldi repeatedly assured W Clappison Ltd it could have confidence to invest in its operations, only to later say it had not won any business for the season.

The High Court decision that GCA Mark White should be allowed to advise on evidence is seen as having opened the door for him to do so in similar cases, should he choose to.

Aldi Reprobates Sparkling Wine

Source: Aldi

The panel noted an ‘absence of storytelling cues’ on Aldi’s Reprobates Sparkling Wine

Aldi rapped by watchdog over 19 Crimes

There could scarcely be a more literal reference to crime than in the name of well-known wine brand 19 Crimes. So, some heads were being scratched in September when Aldi was pulled up by the alcohol industry’s marketing self-regulator, the Portman Group, over its Reprobates Sparkling Wine.

But there was more to it than a name. The regulator’s independent complaints panel found Aldi’s label, which featured a mugshot and prison-style tally lines, together with the name, created an association with criminal behaviour. Crucially, it noted an “absence of any other storytelling cues” to dilute the impression.

Lidl head office job cuts

Despite its growth, Lidl also began two major rounds of redundancies this year.

In July it began consultations over the proposed axing of 70 head office jobs, spread across all departments and representing about 6% of workforce at Tolworth, southwest London.

Then in October it begun a 90-day consultation with 130 HR staff in regional distribution centres, over plans to centralise the function and create 100 new HR jobs in Tolworth.

The explanation? To become leaner and more efficient for growth, according to Lidl. “These proposals are designed to improve the efficiency of our operations, and strengthen our business model,” a spokesperson said in October.

Asda Aldi Lidl price match

Asda had previously matched Aldi and Lidl on more than 400 products

Asda ending Aldi & Lidl price match

Asda has been waging a price war with its traditional supermarket rivals throughout 2025, while arguing the discounters are a less relevant comparison, as they have much smaller ranges.

And Asda showed it meant it in January, when overnight it axed its Aldi and Lidl price match scheme. As revealed first by The Grocer, a page on its website which previously listed about 400 price-matched lines suddenly contained only the message: “Our Aldi Lidl Price Match has now finished, but don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of special offers across our entire groceries range.”

Asda chairman Allan Leighton had ordered the move to help fund investment in everyday low pricing.

Asda’s recent wins in the Grocer 33 price comparisons suggest it is slowly but steadily creating the desired price gap between itself and direct traditional rivals. It is also an outlier in not having an Aldi price match scheme.

With Asda’s sales down 4.3% year on year [Worldpanel 12 w/e 30 November 2025], the wisdom of the approach is yet to be proven.

Aldi and Lidl naturally both leapt on the news in January to respond that their low prices applied to everything they sold.

B&M’s share price

The year got off to a rough start for B&M when it issued a profit warning on 9 January after weaker-than-expected Christmas trading.

Then it issued another one in February, blaming difficult trading and an uncertain economic outlook, at the same time as Alex Russo stepped down as CEO.

In June it acknowledged it must do better after posting a 3.1% decline in like-for-like sales in UK stores in the year to 29 March, but things went from bad to worse in October, when it acknowledged a £7m accounting error as CFO Mike Schmidt stepped down.

Analysts were exasperated with a ‘back to basics’ plan which included improving availability of the most popular products. “These initiatives read like a beginner’s guide to retailing, begging the question why they weren’t implemented in the first place,” said AJ Bell head of markets Dan Coatsworth. “Now we’ve had financial mistakes on top, so it’s only natural to wonder if the business has well and truly gone off the boil.”