Ten years ago this month, Ahold and Delhaize Group finalized their merger, establishing the grocery company known today as Ahold Delhaize.
The companies’ stateside goal was to create a grocery entity that would dominate the East Coast. Prior to the merger, Dutch grocery retailer Ahold operated Stop & Shop and Giant stores, while Delhaize Group ran Food Lion and Hannaford chains. Once the $29 billion tie-up received approval from the Federal Trade Commission in July 2016, a combined company with more than 2,000 U.S. stores was born, making Ahold Delhaize the sixth-largest food retailer in the country at the time.
At the start of 2018, the company formally established Ahold Delhaize USA to act as a parent company for its U.S. banners and operations. Today, Ahold Delhaize USA consists of five banners and still runs around 2,000 stores, according to its 2025 annual report.
ADUSA has proven its ability to adapt over the past decade as competition across the U.S. grocery landscape has intensified.
Along with establishing its internal business structure, a defining part of ADUSA’s first five years was growing its e-commerce operations — an ace up the company’s sleeve from its inception. From growing Peapod Digital Labs to buying a majority stake in FreshDirect, digital capabilities and offerings initially served as ADUSA’s competitive advantage over the likes of Walmart, Kroger and Amazon, which had purchased Whole Foods Market in 2017.
However, as was the case with many grocers following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, e-commerce became less vital as in-person shopping once again took center stage. With the introduction of Ahold Delhaize’s Growing Together Strategy in 2024, the company presented new growth priorities for its stateside business that are centered on omnichannel, store remodels, private label sales growth and retail media.
Here are highlights of Ahold Delhaize’s first 10 years as a combined grocery company and the major changes it has undergone to remain competitive in the United States.
Ahold Delhaize milestones
-
June 2015Dutch grocer Ahold announced plans to acquire Delhaize Group, a merger that followed years of discussion between the two entities. The statement from the companies said Ahold would have a 61% stake in the merged entity.
-
July 2016Ahold and Delhaize Group received regulatory clearance for their merger from the FTC. The merger took effect on July 24, 2016. However, the FTC conditioned its approval on an agreement by the two companies to sell 81 stores to competitors.
-
May 2017Ahold Delhaize announced more than 80 new executive appointments as part of its “brand-centric” restructuring plan. This move, which included naming executives to each of its retail brands, was part of an effort to decentralize its structure, allowing its retail banners to operate according to their market needs.
-
January 2018Ahold Delhaize USA, the parent company of the larger corporation’s U.S. banners, was born. Ahold USA’s chief operating officer at the time, Kevin Holt, stepped into the CEO role of ADUSA. Ahold Delhaize’s then-president and CEO, Dick Boer, said at the time that the move was “the natural next step in our brand-centric strategy in the U.S.”
-
October 2019In an effort to establish a more cohesive shopping experience, Giant Food rebranded its delivery service from Peapod by Giant to Giant Delivers. This was a significant move given that Peapod was an institution for Ahold Delhaize and the sole online grocery operator to survive the dot-com boom. At this point, Peapod was still holding its own against the likes of Amazon Fresh and Instacart.
-
November 2020Ahold Delhaize announced it purchased 80% of New York City-based online grocer FreshDirect. This purchase gave ADUSA access to a highly competitive online grocery market via a company that was already well-established.
-
October 2022Ahold Delhaize’s Peapod Digital Labs announced plans to transition its retail media business to a fully in-house operation. AD Retail Media at the time planned to more than triple its team over the course of a year, and the business said it would soon launch a unified on- and off-site advertising platform.
-
November 2022Holt announced his plans to step down by April 2023. JJ Fleeman, ADUSA’s chief commercial and digital officer and president of Peapod Digital Labs, became Holt’s successor.
-
November 2023ADUSA announced its plans to sell FreshDirect to focus on omnichannel operations — an area Fleeman said at the time was the company’s “biggest growth opportunity.”
-
March 2024ADUSA stopped operating its Peapod Digital Labs and Retail Business Services units as individual companies, consolidating their functions into a unified support group. This change officially ended Ahold Delhaize’s storied Peapod brand.
-
May 2024Parent company Ahold Delhaize introduced its Growing Together strategy, an updated growth model that mapped out key financial and strategic ambitions for 2025 through 2028. The pillars of the Growing Together Strategy include enhancing omnichannel capabilities, remodeling stores, boosting private label sales and scaling supplier partnerships in retail media.
-
August 2025Ahold Delhaize told investors during its second-quarter of fiscal 2025 earnings call that it achieved e-commerce profitability on a fully allocated basis during the first half of the year, a milestone reached largely thanks to ADUSA. During that quarter, ADUSA’s online sales grew more than 16%, and the company completed the U.S. rollout of Prism, Ahold Delhaize’s proprietary e-commerce platform.
-
March 2026ADUSA announced Fleeman’s upcoming departure in June.
-
June 2026Ahold Delhaize’s supervisory board nominated Claire Peters to be CEO of the stateside company, effective Sept. 8. Peters most recently served as Amazon’s vice president for worldwide fresh, overseeing both its North American and international businesses.
Financial data
On the financial front, Ahold Delhaize’s net sales in the U.S. are significantly higher than they were when the grocery store operator was formed a decade ago, but the company’s growth over the years has been uneven.
Ahold Delhaize’s U.S. sales growth has been uneven since the merger
The Dutch chain’s stateside operations generated net sales of just over 53 billion euros ($60.8 billion as of Friday) in fiscal 2025, as same-store sales rose 3%. But net sales declined for three consecutive fiscal years after reaching about 55.2 billion euros in fiscal 2022, the company’s highest stateside sales since the merger closed.
The company’s sales were flat in fiscal 2021 after soaring during the prior year, when the COVID-19 pandemic drove skyrocketing sales across the grocery industry. Ahold Delhaize’s sales were also up in fiscal 2019.
During fiscal 2017, the first full year during which Ahold and Delhaize operated as a single entity, the company’s net sales in the U.S. came in at 38.3 billion euros. That figure comprises Ahold’s U.S. sales of 22.9 billion euros and Delhaize’s stateside sales of 15.4 billion euros. In 2016, Ahold recorded 23.3 billion euros in sales in the U.S., while Delhaize posted U.S. sales of about 15.5 billion euros. Both companies’ sales for 2016 and 2017 reflect pro forma data.
