It is well after 8 p.m. when the young woman comes out of the discount supermarket in Frankfurt's Nordend, her bag filled with fruit, cream cheese and bagels.

Why is she still shopping at this time?

She went out to eat with friends after work, she reports, and is now on her way home to buy her food for tomorrow.

If it were up to Tegut boss Thomas Gutberlet, she would soon no longer be able to do that.

The head of the supermarket chain recently advocated that shops should only open until 8 p.m. to save electricity, but also because of the shortage of skilled workers.

And the young woman would then have to go shopping earlier.

Patricia Andreae

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Sarah Wagener

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Most customers, especially in larger cities, are used to being able to go to the supermarket until 10 p.m., 11 p.m. or even midnight.

At the moment, most supermarkets in Frankfurt are open until 10 p.m., regardless of which chain they belong to.

Some Rewe branches only close at midnight.

The Tegut markets also only close their doors between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., hardly any of them close at 8 p.m.

This has been possible since 2006, when shop closing times were federalized and liberalized by the federal states.

Until then, according to federal law, shops had to close by 8 p.m. at the latest.

"We have been calling for earlier opening hours for a long time," says Hessian Verdi trade unionist Horst Gobrecht.

The return to 8 p.m. was “overdue”.

Shorter opening times controversial

The grocers in the region, on the other hand, do not want to change their opening hours so far.

Their argument: That saves hardly any electricity.

The Edeka branches Scheck-in Center and Haller in Frankfurt, for example, state that a large part of their energy is required for cooling, which has to run around the clock anyway.

A Rewe spokesman calculates that refrigeration systems account for more than half of a store's energy requirements.

In order to save, for example, the waste heat from the cooling system is now used for heating.

Edeka Haller wants to switch off one of two cold stores completely to save energy.

In addition, the employees are asked to close the doors faster.

The Edeka Group with its discounter brand Netto and the Rewe Group (Penny, Nahkauf) are the largest supermarket chains in Germany.

Together with Aldi and Lidl/Kaufland, they are responsible for around 70 percent of sales in food retail.

According to Tegut, the company, which claims to have a single-digit market share in Germany, can save energy in the "lower three-digit range of megawatt hours" every month through shorter opening times.

According to calculations by the energy supplier ENBW, you could work actively on a laptop for five million hours with 100 megawatt hours of electricity.

At the Hessen Trade Association, you can even understand the reasoning of the Tegut boss: Energy costs in retail have risen by almost 150 percent on average since the beginning of the year, says Managing Director Sven Rohde.