At the beginning, there is no hypermarket, red logo or long lines of shopping carts. There is a shop for exotic fruit in Heilbronn, opened by Anton Lidl in 1855. Almost eight decades later, in 1930, Josef Schwarz joined the Lidl & Co. business as a partner. That is when the history began of the company that would later create two of the most recognisable names in European retail – Lidl and Kaufland.
Schwarz gradually changed the direction of the business. From trading in fruit, the company transformed into a food wholesaler and adopted the name Lidl & Schwarz. The war interrupted its development, followed by a long period of recovery. In 1960, the company opened its first cash-and-carry warehouse in northern Württemberg – a model in which customers select the goods and pay on the spot, without traditional retail service.
The Son Who Separated the Two Formats
Dieter Schwarz joined the family business in the late 1950s. After his father’s death in 1977, he took over the management and began developing the company in two different directions – large stores with a broad assortment and discount outlets with limited choice and low prices.
The first important step was taken as early as January 1968, when the Handelshof store opened in Backnang. It covered around 1,000 square metres and had approximately 70 employees – a significant scale for its time. In 1972, the headquarters were moved to Neckarsulm, which remains the group’s centre to this day.
A year later, in 1973, the first discount store opened in Ludwigshafen. It laid the foundations for Lidl, while the large-format business gradually acquired its own name. On 11 September 1984, the first Kaufland store opened in Neckarsulm. Around 30,000 people visited it on its first day, and the outlet became a model for the company’s subsequent expansion.
From Germany to Europe
After German reunification, Kaufland accelerated its expansion. The company entered the Czech Republic in 1998, followed by Slovakia, Croatia, Poland and Romania. The first store in Romania opened in 2005, and the chain later expanded into Bulgaria and other European countries.
The division between Kaufland and Lidl has been maintained: Kaufland operates large stores with tens of thousands of products, while Lidl follows a discount model. Both chains remain part of Schwarz Group, which has gradually moved beyond traditional retail and built its own manufacturing, logistics, recycling and digital services operations.
Dieter Schwarz’s Successors
Dieter Schwarz stepped down from operational management in 2004. His most influential successor was Klaus Gehrig, who led Schwarz Group until 2021. After leaving because of disagreements with Schwarz, management was temporarily taken over by the owner himself, while in December of the same year Gerd Chrzanowski took the helm.
Today, Kaufland is managed by a separate executive team chaired by Frank Schumann. In 2026, Ivan Chernev took over the leadership of the German business, while from 1 November Boyan Luntcher has been responsible for the development of the chain’s seven foreign subsidiaries. Schumann said of Chernev:
“He has known Kaufland for more than two decades and has shown in various countries that he can develop the business even in a challenging environment.”
In the 2025 financial year, Kaufland’s stores generated revenue of €36.7 billion. At the same time, Schwarz Group now brings together around 14,500 stores and 604,000 employees. The journey from wholesale fruit trading in Heilbronn to this international structure spans three generations of management – Josef Schwarz laid the foundations, Dieter Schwarz built Kaufland, and professional managers have continued its development beyond the family.
Sources: presseportal.de, handelsblatt.com, tz.de