Lidl

Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG

Trading name	Lidl
Type	Privately held company
Industry	Retailing
Founded	1930; 87 years ago (1930)
Founder	Dieter Schwarz
Headquarters	Neckarsulm, Germany
Number of locations	Over 10,000 stores, in 28 countries in Europe
Area served	Most of Europe
Products	Discount store, hypermarket/supercenter/superstore
Revenue	€ 63,35 billion euro (2013)
Owner	Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG
Number of employees	315,000
Parent	Schwarz Gruppe
Divisions	Lidl, Kaufland
Website	lidl-info.com

Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG (German pronunciation: [ˈliːdəl]; UK /ˈlɪdəl/ LID-əl), formerly Schwarz Unternehmens Treuhand KG, is a German global discount supermarket chain, based in Neckarsulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, that operates over 10,000 stores across Europe. It belongs to the holding company Schwarz Gruppe, which also owns the store chains Handelshof and hypermarket Kaufland.

Lidl is the chief competitor of the similar German discount chain Aldi.

The company was founded in 1930 by a member of the Schwarz family, and was called Schwarz Lebensmittel-Sortimentsgroßhandlung (Schwarz Foods Assortment Wholesale). Lidl has since established itself in over 20 countries throughout Europe.

The name Lidl is the surname of a former business partner of Josef Schwarz's, Ludwig Lidl, a retired schoolteacher, and Josef's son Dieter Schwarz bought the rights to the name from him for 1,000 German marks, as he could not use the name Schwarz Markt; Schwarzmarkt means "black market". Lidl is part of the Schwarz Group, the fifth-largest retailer in the world with sales of $82.4 billion (2011).

In 1930, Josef Schwarz became a partner in Südfrüchte Großhandel Lidl & Co., a fruit wholesaler, and he developed the company into a general food wholesaler. As a result of the war, the company was destroyed in 1944, and a 10-year reconstruction period soon started. In 1977, under his son Dieter Schwarz, the Schwarz-Gruppe began to focus on discount markets, larger supermarkets, and cash and carry wholesale markets.