If you have been out food shopping in Berlin lately, you may be feeling a little confused. There are supermarkets with Kaiser's signs on the outside that inside sell Edeka products and there are supermarkets with brand new Rewe signs and half-empty shelves. This is because the Kaiser's Tengelmann supermarket chain is being taken over by Edeka and Rewe. The 120 odd Kaiser's supermarkets in Berlin have been equally split between the two competitors and the Kaiser's brand is being phased out.
I have to admit that I am quite sad about this. After eight years of living in Berlin I had grown fond of Kaiser's and their products. Whenever you needed groceries there would always be a Kaiser's nearby. But now everything is changing. At the moment it is all rather chaotic, as anyone who has ever been through a takeover knows only too well. Apparently there will be no jobs lost, but I could see the confusion and worry in the eyes of the employees in a supermarket under transformation yesterday.
While change is happening everywhere around Schönhauser Allee and
Pappelallee, I was relieved to see that my closest Kaiser's has not changed yet, but I know it is now only a question of days. Goodbye Kaiser's, we will miss you.
