Edeka

The Edeka Group is the largest German supermarket corporation as of 2017, holding a market share of 20.3%. Founded in 1898, it consists today of several cooperatives of independent supermarkets all operating under the umbrella organisation Edeka Zentrale AG & Co KG, with headquarters in Hamburg. There are approximately 4,100 stores with the Edeka nameplate that range from small corner stores to hypermarkets. On November 16, 2007, Edeka reached an agreement with Tengelmann to purchase a 70% majority stake in Tengelmann's Plus discounter store division, which was then merged into Edeka's Netto brand, with some 4,200 stores by 2018. Under all brands the company operated a total of 13,646 stores at the end of 2017.
The cooperative was founded in 1898 as the E.d.K. . In 1911, it was renamed as Edeka - a phonetic expansion of the previous abbreviation. The Edekabank was founded in 1914 and, from 1923, central billing was introduced.

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