85% of Germany’s Food Retail Market Is Controlled by the “Big Four”
According to Colliers International, one of the world’s Top-5 real estate advisory firms, private and institutional investors have allocated the equivalent of USD 1 trillion into commercial real estate across Germany over the past 25 years. Between 2015 and 2022, annual investment volumes consistently exceeded €50 billion. The all-time high was recorded in 2019, when domestic and international capital flows reached an “astronomical” €71.6 billion.
While institutional investors — including investment funds, banks and insurance groups — traditionally prioritise capital-intensive asset classes such as office buildings, logistics facilities and large-scale residential rental portfolios ranging from €10 million to nearly €1 billion per single asset or portfolio, wealthy private investors have long shown a different preference.
For high-net-worth individuals, the most favoured investment category in Germany has always been food retail properties — supermarkets and retail centres — typically priced between €3 million and €20 million, provided they are leased on a long-term basis to tenants from Germany’s Top-10 food retail groups, and ideally to one of the Top-4 market leaders.
Why exactly these tenants?
According to the German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt), 85% of the country’s grocery retail market is controlled by just four players — the so-called Big Four, all German-rooted multinational retail groups:
Schwarz Gruppe, REWE Group, EDEKA Gruppe, and ALDI.
Collectively, these companies operate 47,000 supermarkets across more than 30 countries, employ 1.7 million staff, and generate a combined annual turnover of €420 billion (2023).
Despite being the smallest of the Big Four by global scale, EDEKA dominates within Germany, holding a 23% share of the domestic grocery market — the largest among all players.
Is There “Life” Beyond the Big Four?
Absolutely.
Germany’s Top-20 food retailers include numerous strong regional and national chains generating €1+ billion in annual revenue.
Beyond food, two giants of the drugstore segment — DM (ranked 5th) and Rossmann (6th) — form a powerful parallel universe of everyday consumer demand:
DM: €15.1 billion revenue (2023), 4,036 stores in 13 countries
Rossmann: €13.9 billion revenue (2023), 4,713 stores in 9 countries