Delhaize Group

Delhaize Le Lion / De Leeuw (French pronunciation: ​[dəlɛːz]) was a food retailer headquartered in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Brussels, Belgium, and operating in seven countries and on three continents. The principal activity of Delhaize Group is the operation of food supermarkets. On June 24, 2015, Delhaize reached an agreement with Ahold to merge and form a new parent company headquartered in the Netherlands: Ahold Delhaize.

Delhaize Le Lion / De Leeuw was founded near Charleroi, Belgium, in 1867 by Jules Delhaize and his brothers Auguste, Edouard and Adolphe. He was helped in this endeavor by his future brother-in-law, Jules Vieujant. For their new company, they chose the lion, the symbol of strength, as their logo. They also chose a motto: unity is strength.

As of 31 December 2014, Delhaize Group had a sales network (which includes directly operated, franchised, and affiliated stores) of 3,402 stores and employed approximately 150,000 people (excluding the stores and related associates of divested and discontinued operations). Store formats are primarily supermarkets, which represent 85% of Delhaize Group's sales network. Delhaize Group's sales network also includes other store formats such as neighborhood stores, convenience stores, and specialty stores. The company is actively engaged with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program to manage energy efficiency across its U.S. facilities.

In addition to food retailing, Delhaize Group engages in food wholesaling to stores in its sales network and in nonfood retailing of products such as pet products and health and beauty products.

In 2014, Delhaize Group recorded revenue of €21.4 billion and underlying operating profit of €762 million. Delhaize Group's operations are located primarily in the United States (Food Lion LLC, Hannaford Brothers Company) and Belgium. Other operations are located in Greece, Indonesia, Serbia, Luxembourg and Romania.

Delhaize entered the U.S. market through its acquisition of Food Town Stores in 1983, renaming it Food Lion and expanding from 22 stores to 226. In 1985, it became a franchisee for Cub Foods and opened the first of many stores in the Atlanta area and in 1996 acquired Kash n' Karry, a Florida grocery chain. Both its Cub Foods stores, and the Kash n' Karry chain have since been sold by Delhaize.