Aldi has put the rollout of its ‘Everyday Essentials’ budget range on hold in the wake of the launch of Tesco’s ‘Everyday Value’ range, The Grocer has learned.

A source close to Aldi admitted that the discounter thought its packaging looked dated against Tesco’s and that it needed to step up its reformulation programme in the wake of recent own-label developments at the major grocers.

Even before the Tesco rollout, Aldi’s budget range, which includes bacon, sliced bread, baked beans and pasta, had not performed to expectations, he added.

Aldi was now overhauling the range it launched in January with a view to relaunching it later this summer as the ‘good’ part of a stronger ‘good, better, best’ supermarket-style offering.

The new-look ‘Everyday Essentials’ range will join Aldi’s range of mid-tier brands, which don’t fall under a single banner, and its top tier ‘Specially Selected’ range, which the retailer plans to boost in size over the next few months.

“Aldi’s founding principles are to have a standard range with no tiers but the pricing of that standard tier was coming under attack from supermarket value ranges,” said the source.

“It was delivering on quality but being undercut on price so it introduced Everyday Essentials to combat that. But the range hasn’t worked as well as Aldi thought it would. And with Tesco launching an ‘Everyday’ range, all development is on hold.”

The introduction of a three-tier range was another indication that Aldi, which only recently introduced baskets to its stores, was moving towards a standard UK supermarket model, added the source.

“Developing an offer familiar to UK customers has been part and parcel of the success Aldi has enjoyed over the past couple of years,” he said.

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