Shopping for your daily groceries – Our GUIDE to the Danish Grocery Market

Getting used to shopping for your groceries in a new country can be quite a challenge. In Denmark, for instance, you won’t find any of the hypermarkets you may have been used to. OUR GUIDE offers some insights into who’s who.

By Bente D. Knudsen

Upon moving to Denmark, one of the first new adjustments that you have to make is dealing with your daily grocery and household supplies shopping.

If you find Danish prices high, you are possibly not surprised by the latest European Price Index Statistics from 2023. They place Danish food prices at the very top of the 15 EU countries Danes normally compare themselves with only surpassed by Luxembourg.

The general Danish food price level (excluding alcoholic beverages) is at index 116 of a European average (all 27 countries) set at 100.

In the same price index range are countries such as Malta at 116, Ireland at 113 and Finland at 110. France and Germany are at 107 and 106 respectively.

Looking only at the HFCE index (bread and cereals, meat, fish and dairy products); these four subgroups of food represent on average 17 percent, 23 percent, five percent and 16 percent of household expenditure.

Within the EU, Denmark is the most expensive country in which to buy bread and cereals with an index of 142 compared to the EU average of 100, with Germany at index 109 and France at index 101, whereas meat at index 90 is less expensive than for instance France’s meat prices at index 126 and Germany’s at 117.

In Denmark, as in the rest of Europe, prices have been on the rise since 2022 and therefore the Danish Grocery Market is turning more and more back towards discount as consumers are adapting to steep price increases.

It was only during the corona years that consumers spent more on grocery shopping in high-end shops and less in discount stores.

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Prior to corona, Danes were notorious for trying to spend as little as possible on their groceries and shopping at discounters or scanning the “tilbudsaviser”, special offer flyers, was a national sport. This has a huge impact on the grocery chains’ revenues.

This trend is back, and the market shares of discounters are growing.
According to an analysis by Retail Institute Scandinavia it is expected that by 2029 discount’s market share will be around 49 percent of the total grocery market up from today’s approximately 40 percent. The number 1 discounter in terms of market share is Netto, owned by Salling Group.

Since 2022, Danes have reacted to the price increases by:
Scanning for good offers and reading the tilbudsaviser/special offer flyers,
Buying the supermarkets’ own brands
Shopping for their groceries at discount stores.

Shopping across borders is also common. Danes living in mid and south Jutland are quite used to driving to German outlets. Prices there are lower also because of the lower German VAT on food compared to Denmark’s 25 percent.

In this short guide, you will find an overview of what the market looks like, who the main players are and how you can shop smart to reduce costs.

Find our guide below.

What does the market look like?
The Danish grocery market, in Danish dagligvarehandel, is a market of around DKK 100 billion and is characterised by a very large market share of the discount chains who corneres a 40 percent share of the market; Danes from all social groups shop for their daily groceries in one or more of them.

The battle for market share is between the high-end grocery stores and discounters, with the closure of IRMA in 2023 (a higher end grocery chain in the Copenhagen area), it seems that high-end is on a continued downward trend.

Traditionally, the discounters’ prices for selected goods were quite similar, but in recent price surveys, the price difference between the different discounters is on the rise between the cheapest and most expensive. Competition between the chains is fierce.

Find an overview of the key players in the Danish Grocery Market below.

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With no large international players in Denmark, the grocery sector consists of  five grocery groups;

Three main Danish groups each with several different grocery brands; Salling Group, Coop and Dagrofa.

A Norwegian group with just one discount chain, REMA 1000.

One smaller German supermarket Lidl competes within the discount market (Aldi withdrew from the Danish market last year and its shop locations are being taken over to a large extent by REMA 1000 as well as a smaller number by NETTO and Lidl).

The two largest grocery groups, and by far most dominant groups, are COOP and Salling Group with a total combined market share of about 60 percent, each with a share of between 30 to 35 percent of the total market.

Depending on when the estimate is made, they move one or two percentage points in terms of market share.

In recent years, Salling Group has been the largest of the two in terms of share of turnover.

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Salling Group:

They own the grocery chains Netto (discount), Bilka, Føtex, Føtex Food and the department store Salling located in Aarhus and Aalborg as well as the online shop wupti.com.

They also own the online home delivery service SkagenFood (delivery of fresh fish and a small selected range of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat). In 2023 they had a turnover of DKK 70,3 billion (including their foreign Netto shops, Salling etc so not only their Danish grocery market turnover).

The Bilka supermarkets are the closest thing you will come to a hypermarket, with only one of them large enough to be defined as a hypermarket; if you are used to shopping in giants such as Carrefour or Walmart, you will find them very small in comparison.

There are 19 Bilkas in Denmark, mostly located outside of the city centres.

Føtex/Føtex Food is a higher-end brand with 108 Føtex/Føtex Food supermarkets. They compete with the supermarket chain MENY owned by Dagrofa as well as with COOP’s supermarket chains, Brugsen, SuperBrugsen and Kvickly.

Netto is the country’s largest discounter with an estimated 35 percent market share of the discount market according to Retail Institute Scandinavia and 531 shops (Editor’s note: 2023 figures).

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COOP Denmark

Has 900 supermarkets and is owned by its 1.9 million members. It is organised in the cooperative structure of COOP Amba, a Danish/Swedish group.

They own the supermarket chains Kvickly, SuperBrugsen, Brugsen and the discount chain Coop365 Discount (name changed in 2023 from Fakta to Coop365 discount).

COOP Denmark has been making losses in recent years and have reorganised their different brands during 2023/2024 in order to counter the downward spiral.

Back at the end of 2022, they announced that due to the price pressure from discounters and increasing running costs in all of COOP’s grocery shops they would reduce the number of brands and shop locations. It was later decided to reduce the number of grocery chains to 4 from formerly 6.

The chain IRMA and DagliBrugsen were closed and their shop locations either sold or transformed into one of the four remaining brands.

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Dagrofa

Owns the supermarket chains Meny and Spar.

Dagrofa, which for many years had wholesale and Food Service as its main business focus, is owned by three different partners; Norgesgruppen (49 percent), KFi-erhvervsdrivende Fond (41 percent) and by the independent grocery owners (10 percent) who run their grocery shops under the Meny brand.

In the greater Copenhagen area, these are for instance the Meny ROTUNDEN in Hellerup as well as Dahlgaard in Hørsholm.

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Reitan

Is a Norwegian group and in Denmark, Reitan owns the discount chain Rema 1000 with 419 Rema 1000 shops as well as 189 convenience stores (in Danish language called kiosk) under the 7-Eleven brand name.

Rema 1000’s shops run on a franchise basis and the chain continues to expand in Denmark opening new locations throught the takeover of the main part of the closed Aldi shops. Of the total Danish grocery market, REMA 1000 has a market share of around 14 percent and according to the latest analysis by Retail Institute Scandinavia could be the number 1 on the Danish discount market in 2029 taking over of NETTO’s number one position.

The name 1000 is derived from the 1,000 stock-keeping units sold in their shops.

German discounters

There is only one Lidl – still small in terms of market share, Lidl has 107 locations.

Read more about the discount market below.

The discount groceries market

With a 40 to 41 percent market share of the total Danish grocery market, a large proportion of the Danes’ total groceries shopping basket is bought at discounters.

This development has been notable since the financial crisis; in 2007 discounters’ market share was “only” 28.8 percent.

A range of discount chains battle fiercely over market share.

However, for some years, the discount chain Netto, owned by Salling Group, has been the market leader of the grocery discount market with approximately 35 percent share of the total grocery discount market.

Getting valid market share figures for the different discounters’ share of the grocery discount market is difficult as market shares are well guarded secrets.

In the latest public figures we could find, Netto’s share is estimated to be 35 percent of the grocery discount market with a 15 percent share of the total grocery market.

Second after Netto is Rema 1000 which would bring them to 25 to 30 percent market share of the grocery discount market.

In Denmark it has become something quite common and normal to shop at a discounter. When Netto was first launched, many people took more fancy shopping bags with them, such as IRMA bags, when they went shopping, thus being able to put the cheap goods into a higher end brand bag.

But now, many discounters have very good quality brands and products, and the renovated discount shops are looking much better and compare more with the traditional grocery stores.

Therefore, many consumers no longer perceive them as discounters but just as supermarkets,”retail expert Dorte Wimmer said to Berlingske Business.

Other household appliances shops:
NORMAL is a discount chain selling hair products, body care products, cosmetics and other household supplies in competition with Matas and the supermarkets also selling these items.

They are able to compete on price by parallel importing brands and products from large wholesalers outside Denmark.

If you have ever shopped at a Danish grocery discount shop, you will know that discount shopping is not necessarily a great experience; many shops are messy and badly laid out, and the selection of brands and products limited. Products are often stored in cardboard boxes rather than on shelves.

In Netto, the section with special offers called ”Spot Varer” takes up 40 percent of the space in a very disorganised way. However, even this is changing as for instance NETTO shops go through planned face-lifts, begun in 2022 and an ongoing proces.

TIPS to help you get cheaper groceries

The most important rule: You cannot get all you need in one shop, you also have to shop also at a discount grocery shop; many Danes get their basics here and shop for other grocery items at one of the regular supermarkets or go to a speciality shop.

Read the tilbudsaviser( the special offer flyers) and take note whenever there are deals to be made on brands you normally buy. Every supermarket and discounter have them. The offers are based on sales for a week, typically starting on a Saturday and ending Friday unless it is a special weekend offer. They are all published online as well.  Find a link to a few of them here: Netto, Meny, Rema 1000.

Buy larger quantities at lower prices and split with friends if you don’t have storage space.