El artículo fue escrito por Andrea MeneghiniCEO Food Retail Italy, author of a study on the Latin American markets developed at NielsenIQ and presented by Meneghini during the TuttoFood 2026 fair in Milan. Both TuttoFood and Alimentec Bogotá form part of the Anuga international circuit, one of the most important weekday platforms in the world for the food industry and retail. Andrea Meneghini He will also be one of the main international invitees of this edition of Alimentec, where on Sunday (11 June 2 pm) he will share analyzes and perspectives on the evolution of retail and discount formats in Latin America.
The size is the same and the prices are lower in both cases. The moments are essential, the old veteran, the own brand dominates and, without embargo, there is a “hard discount” in the 90s in Italy (and Europe) and a hard discount today in Latin America means describe some retail phenomena that share the form, but not the function.
This is, in part, what I will count during my time there Bogotá International Fair Anuga Select Food next week, from June 11th to 14:00 pm. At first glance, the European hard discounters of the first generation and the Latin Americans seem like herramientas, but atacan radically distinct objectives. And attention: understanding this difference is not an academic exercise, but the key to correctly interpreting the distribution transformation that is crossing Latin America and obtaining operational conclusions for those working in FMCG markets and in the brand industry.
Since about ten years ago I have been familiar with the Mass Retail Market in Colombia, becoming more familiar with the Peruvian and Chilean markets and starting to enter the huge Mexican market. The deeper I am, the more I understand the dynamics that separate these countries from European models, having studied them in the 90s first in Italy and then in France, England, Germany and Spain. For several years I was an advisor to large Italian groups on the evolution of the European mass retail market; In some countries I work actively as a manager and today this experience transferred to Latin America helps me to understand these phenomena and size them correctly.
1992 was a decisive year for Italian retail: Lidl opened its first store in a market that, in that era, had never been seen; on the contrary, it was a country where the mass retail market went through a phase of maximum expansion. In this period, modern distribution accounted for more than 50% of the Italian food trade, while the traditional trade - the historic districts of the neighborhood - still resisted at 41%, reflecting the enormous differences that exist between the north and south of the country. It was not a market dominated by organized consumerism, but the trajectory was unequivocal.
In this same period, supermarkets increased from 3.696 to 6.413 units only between 1992 and 2000, and hypermarkets from 182 to 349. The phenomenon of hypermarkets, with surface areas of 7.000–15.000 m² and the promise of finding “everything smaller” el mismo techo”, was redesigning the shopping habits of Italian and Spanish families (older French children). It was a format that seduced through abundance: thousands of references, sections dedicated to non-food, huge stations and permanent promotions under the big brands.
In this context, The European hard discounter was born as a response to excess and also to horror. The implicit message to the consumer was: you don't need all this. You can make your purchases in 400 m² over 8.000. You can buy products without recognizable brands and get between 28% and 30% compared to the supermarket. The discount store of the 90s was anti-hypermarket by vocation and anti-brand by structural necessity, because this expensive model does not allow you to pay the price lists of the big brand industries. On natural victim it was not the barrio tienda, which was being derailed by the wave of the Great Consumption organized above all with the large hypermarkets: in the middle was the consumer who could have chosen the hypermarket or the regular supermarket and, in exchange, opted for the price and the shopping.
The growth of the discount store in Italy and in southern Europe was slow at first and almost unstoppable. In 2004, it was decided that two years after its arrival, the discount accounted for 8% of Great Organized Consumption, with supermarkets accounting for 49,9% and hypermarkets accounting for 13,9%. I just worked in the discount channel at that time and I perfectly remember the level of competitive pressure we faced. In 2017, the discount market increased its share of 16% of the total mass retail market, growing at an average annual rate of 9,6%. In those years I remember a private dinner with the owner of an Italian discount store branch that was very important to me and said to me: “See that the discount stores will increase by 1% of the price of the national market per year during the next few years”. It seemed impossible to me. However, in 2021 the discounter has increased to 21,7% of organized mass consumption, while hypermarkets and superstores (with up to 2.500 m2) have fallen by 32,6% in 2007 to 26,5%. In 2024, the Mediobanca Observatory on Organized Great Consumption estimated a growth of 3,6% in the turnover of low price points, double that of the rest of the operators, with a CAGR 2019–2024 of 8,4% compared to the 4,9% of the rest of the world distribution. The enemy destroyed by the Italian discount store, over time, was precisely the hypermarket. Not the traditional tienda. The traditional store (normal trade) has disappeared.
Latin America today: when the discount store undermines informality
Moving today to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador or Mexico means entering a structurally distinct retail universe. Here The modern mass retail market has not yet been explored on a historical basis. The normal trade — the neighborhood shops, the bodegas, the street markets and the junk shops — is now the dominant channel in much of the region.
The data is striking: in Peru, the traditional channel currently represents between 65% and 70% of the total FMCG businesses, with approximately 500.000 active shops, of which 60% operate within the informal economy. In Mexico, food stores and foods account for 56% of the food market, with approximately 1,2 million sales points. In Ecuador, the most significant indicator comes from the own brand: private label gas in discount stores has increased by 300% in the last few years, an unequivocal sign of consumer transfer from the informal store — where the own brand does not exist — to organized retail.
The Latin American neighborhood shop cannot be compared with the Italian shop of the 70-80s. It is an economic institution with very specific structural features: buy small batches at local distributors, sells on informal credit to the neighborhood residents, no emite factura, does not have adequate refrigeration y no work with planned results. Works under five or six main categories —drinks, snacks, tobacco, dry products and basic hygiene items. It has a penetration of 99% of Peruvian hogars, according to NielsenIQ Peru 2024. Its reach is impossible to replicate for any organized event, especially in peri-urban areas, popular neighborhoods and crowded streets for logging trucks.
In this context, the Latin American hard discounter was not born to fight the hypermarket. It was created to capture the gas that historically circulates within the informal ecosystem of the neighborhood store. In its geographical location it is listed: 200–400 m² buildings, located at a peatonal distance from popular residential neighborhoods, with between 600 and 1.000 total SKUs (compared to 20.000–40.000 in a hypermarket), priced between 15% and 30% lower than traditional supermarket and a host of private labels that practically dominate all relevant categories in Colombia and Ecuador.
Colombia as a laboratory: D1, ARA and the end of the traditional business
Ningún country offers a case study as clear as Colombia. D1 was founded in 2009 with a seemingly simple idea: taking the Aldi/Lidl model to a country where the modern mass retail market has never really penetrated beyond the middle and upper urban classes. The result was one of the fastest retail transformations in the recent history of emerging markets.
D1 — less than 15 years old — moved to Exito (the main Colombian hypermarket group, controlled by the French Casino group) of the country's restaurant leader (if only the food part of the package is included). In 2022, D1 made 13,9 billion Colombian pesos, in 2025 it made 21,56 billion. An extraordinary remontada. But it is important to understand where this growth comes from: no one would ever leave shoppers at the grocery stores, until absorbing thousands of families who previously made their daily purchases in the neighborhood stores, historically responsible for serving the popular classes through an informal and fragmented offer.
During the last decade, the Colombian discounter grew at an annual rate of 24%, surpassing both hypermarkets and e-commerce. At the conference on June 11th I will share some very interesting facts about 2026.
The isochronous mechanism: how the impact is distributed
It must be decided clearly that The Latin American discount store is not immune to competition with organized supermarkets. Each new opening generates an area of influence — the history — that inevitably it overlaps with other formats present in the territory. When a D1 opens in a neighborhood of Bogotá and waits for an Éxito or Olímpica supermarket, that supermarket will inevitably feel the pressure. But the supermarket has defensive items that the neighborhood store does not have: you can shop for fresh food, local references, service, loyalty programs, planned promotions or your own private brand.
The McKinsey report on Latin American grocery retail (2024) confirms that between 2022 and 2023 the frequency of purchases in the modern channel grew by 7%, while visits to the traditional channel grew by 2,9%. But the most relevant fact is that “The discount format is consistently the biggest growth in Latin America” —and it grows precisely in the countries where normal trade still dominates, not in those where modern large-scale retail trade is fully structured.
The neighborhood farm, on the contrary, does not have comparable defensive herramientas. You cannot compete on price against industrialized cost structures. No access to private labels. No customer data required. No easy access to financing to modernize. In Peru, according to the SCIRP investigation (2025), less than 50% of bodega owners completed secondary education and 60% operate within the informal economy without fiscal registration. The difference in management capabilities compared to the organized discount store is abysmal.
The implications for the brand industry
The difference is not just analytical. It has direct consequences for people who produce large-scale consumer goods and want to develop its presence in Latin American markets.
In Europe in the 90s, the discount store represented an amenity for the big brands because the canal is closed. The industry's reaction was defensive: protecting presence in hypermarkets and supermarkets and reversing brand equity to turn indispensable brands. It worked partially: the discount store continued to grow, but the industrial brand maintained its relevance within the traditional modern channel.
In Latin America, logic is radically distinct. The discount does not exclude the brands: they are placed next to private labels that progressively erode their space, and this occurs with different intensities according to each operator. D1 places your own brands that are market leaders, as happens with Mercadona in España or Migros in Suiza. Tiendas Mass in Peru began with a predominance of industrial brands and then began a profound transformation. But, above all, the discount store incorporates into the organized channel thousands of consumers who were previously waiting exclusively for the informal store - a channel where the big brands are present in single-brand formats, without display, without rotation management and without sell-out data.
The green light appears for the big brands when the discounter reaches the height —as happens with D1—: when the private label has educated the Latin American consumer to live without the industrial brand. At this moment, the penetration of the brand into the discount channel must be an opportunity and becomes a defensive necessity. In Colombia and Ecuador, where the private label represents 32% of discount stores compared to a regional average of 25,9%, this phase has come.
Conclusion: the discount as in the market you are visiting
The European hard discount of the 90s was a format that emerged from a tough market and responded to its saturation. The Latin American hard discount today is a format that emerges from a market in transit and accelerates its maturation. The first man fought the excess; the second combats fragmentation and informality.
This structural mission difference explains why the projects are so distinct: in Italy the discount store is established at around 22–23% of the large-scale retail trade, increasing the natural balance within an organized market. In Latin America, Monitor Deloitte estimates one potential penetration of 40% by 2030: an unprecedented growth trajectory in the history of European retail, simply because the space to conquer is enormously larger.
The normal Latin American trade is not, as it happens in Italy, a dying patient who the discount helps to die more quickly. He remains alive, well-rounded, understood and culturally integrated into the daily life of the neighborhoods. But take care of the necessary hardware to survive the economic formalization that the discounter takes. On the road it won't be fast or totally —in Mexico, as reported by NielsenIQ, the companies continue to grow in an absolute number including at the latest relative price—, but the direction is clear.
Understanding this difference is the key to any distribution strategy that aspires to be effective in these markets. Who applies the European models of the years 90 and 2000 to South America is currently reasoning with the wrong map.
