In the western German village of Lohne, where the only grocery store closed its doors earlier this year, residents do their food shopping on board a red-and-green supermarket bus that rolls into the main square once a week.
For 90 minutes, locals get a chance to buy the essentials without having to get into a car to drive to the nearest store.
The supermarket-on-wheels is a pilot project between Germany’s third-largest food retailer, REWE, and the Deutsche Bahn railway company.
Photo: AFP
The bus began plying its route in March, catering to rural villages in the state of Hesse where brick-and-mortar stores have become an increasingly rare sight, turning some areas into so-called food deserts.
For the about 600 inhabitants of Lohne, where the balconies are dotted with colorful geraniums, the arrival of the REWE shopping bus is a welcome sight after the village’s only mini-mart closed for good in the spring.
“I can get the basics here,” said 90-year-old Inge Nehreng, who rode her electric trike 3km to join the weekly bus rendezvous.
“If I need something special, I go to a department store,” she added.
Parked on the village square, the 18m long bendy bus carries more than 950 everyday products. Fresh fruit and vegetables are on display outside the bus, while inside the choice ranges from food items to cigarettes, newspapers, soap and condoms.
“The only things missing are nappies and wet wipes,” said Yasmine Schneider, 34, who was shopping with her toddler Felix.
The mobile supermarket has also become a popular meeting place, a chance for the often elderly residents to catch up while getting their weekly groceries.
“After shopping, we sit on a bench and talk a bit,” said 85-year-old Ursula Sauer, who lives alone.
From Monday to Saturday, the supermarket bus covers a 600km route, stopping at 23 villages.
The prices on board “are the same” as in the REWE supermarkets, said Joern Berszinski, who manages the supermarket bus.
Deutsche Bahn provides the driver for the project, while the onboard cashier is employed by REWE.
Despite its appeal, it remains to be seen how profitable the bus service will be.
“It takes three years for a stationary shop to turn a profit, the bus could also take a few years,” said Berszinski, who has run franchises under the REWE banner for 30 years.
A key selling point for the mobile supermarket is that REWE can reach more customers with a single sales team.
“At a time when there’s a shortage of skilled workers, that’s an advantage,” said Frank Klingenhoefer, in charge of mobility services at Deutsche Bahn Regio.
The bus project has not gone unnoticed in Germany, where nearly 2,000 supermarkets of fewer than 400m2 have closed over the past decade, EHI retail research group said.
“Many communities in other regions have expressed an interest,” Klingenhoefer said.
The REWE supermarket group plans to wait until the end of the pilot project in March 2025 before deciding whether to expand.
Deutsche Bahn already has eight “medical buses” crisscrossing the countryside to tend to Germany’s aging population in remote areas. It also has plans for a bus offering banking services.
Klingenhoefer said he could imagine services like shoe and clothing repairs on wheels as well, anything “where the needs of a single village are too small” to justify a brick-and-mortar investment.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS