Again, more supermarkets are open on Christmas Day. This year, customers are welcome in almost half of the supermarkets for a Christmas message. Last year this was possible at 40 percent of the supermarkets. Significantly more supermarkets are open on Boxing Day: about eight in ten. That is slightly less than last year, according to figures from Opening Hours.nl
In the days before Christmas, the supermarket becomes crowded. Due to the current corona measures, supermarkets are only open until 8 p.m.
This year, supermarkets in 250 municipalities will be open on Christmas Day, customers can visit more than 1,700 stores. Last year, 244 municipalities and 1,655 supermarkets were involved. “If we look at the six largest municipalities in the Netherlands, no less than three quarters of the supermarkets there will be open on December 25 this year. Amsterdam leads the way with 89 percent opened branches, followed by The Hague with 83 percent, Rotterdam 76 percent, Utrecht 71 percent and Eindhoven and Tilburg with 66 percent each,” said Bob Gross of Openingstijden.nl.
More and more supermarkets are also open in smaller municipalities. Gross: ,,If we look at the municipalities where the supers are open, this concerns on average half of the branches.”
Supermarket formula Vomar takes the cake: on Saturday almost all branches of this chain (91.4 percent) are open. At Jumbo this concerns slightly more than half of the stores (50.7 percent), at Albert Heijn at 63.4 percent. At the German discounters Aldi and Lidl, Christmas Day is properly honored when it comes to a day off: at Aldi 15.7 percent of the stores are open, at Lidl more than 12 percent. Nettorama’s regular customers should not go to their favorite store on Saturday: only 3.2 percent is open.
Decline
Just like other years, many supermarkets are open on Boxing Day, about 80 percent on average. That is slightly less than last year, when 90 percent of the branches were open. The decrease is ‘due’ to the fact that December 26 this year falls on a Sunday. In several municipalities, shops must remain closed on Sundays.
Last year, Openingstijden.nl reported an extension of opening hours in the week before Christmas: ‘Corona requires more space for groceries’, was the motto. Some 1150 large-scale gritters then extended their opening hours until 10 p.m.
It is not only the limited opening hours that cause greater crowds. Gross: ,,Restaurants are also closed, so more people will again start working at home in the kitchen and do their shopping. Picking up food or having it delivered by your favorite restaurant is of course possible in many cases.”
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