Giles Hurley has spent his career not running a loyalty card. Now the chief executive of Aldi UK says the schemes his rivals do run are, in some cases, duping the customers who wave them at the till.
Hurley’s objection is narrow and worth quoting properly. Discounts are helpful, he said, when they are real and when they show realistic reductions. The problem, as he frames it in remarks carried by the BBC, is promotions that start from unrealistically high prices and come down to prices that aren’t that competitive. High street shorthand: fake reference pricing dressed up as member-only generosity.
Aldi is the only major UK supermarket chain without a loyalty scheme, which makes this both an attack and a defence. Its own figures show sales up 5 per cent to £19bn in 2025, but operating profits slipped slightly as staff pay and investment costs rose. The chain says it spent £340m this year on cutting prices, and plans 40 new stores next year inside a £900m investment programme, alongside expanded long-term agreements with British suppliers.
The competition watchdog’s record is inconvenient for Hurley’s case. The CMA investigated supermarket loyalty pricing in 2024 and concluded that shoppers almost always make a genuine saving through member prices. Retail consultant and former Asda buyer Ged Futter told the BBC the intervention was a distraction from the fact that Aldi is under pressure, describing a chain that was on a meteoric rise until about two years ago and is now growing behind the main supermarket pack. The price gap isn’t as clear as it once was, he said.
What the exchange tells you about the grocery trade is more useful than either side’s claim. Loyalty cards are the largest private data asset on the high street, driving personalised pricing, stock allocation and range decisions worth billions of pounds a year. The chains that have them will not surrender them over a competitor’s interview. The chain that hasn’t is making a virtue of abstinence while the market around it squeezes margins in the same way.
Hurley made similar comments in the past, and Aldi’s line that it is the only retailer whose weekly shop is cheaper this summer than last summer invites the obvious test, basket by basket, week by week. Consumers with two apps on two phones will do it themselves. That, more than any watchdog report, is how the argument ends.
He also used the interview to push supply-chain nationalism, arguing that recent droughts and global events show the UK should treat boosting domestic food production as a strategic priority to blunt shocks that push up prices.