Albert Heijn

Albert Heijn supermarkets are again experiencing major payment problems on Tuesday morning. A technical issue with the regular cash registers means that customers can currently only pay for their groceries via the self-scanner, a spokesperson said to NOS.

Only about half of the Albert Heijn branches in the Netherlands are equipped with self-scanners. Payments are currently impossible at the other branches, according to the broadcaster.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn plans to step up its fight against food waste with a new system called "dynamic discounts". This involves an electronic price tag that gives customers a bigger and bigger discount the closer a product comes to its sell-by date, NOS reports.

Over the past year, Albert Heijn threw away 1 percent of unsold products because they exceeded their expiry date. That amounts to 63 million kilograms of wasted food.  The supermarket chain hopes that the dynamic discounts system can help reduce this.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn will start offering hot meal delivery from Friday - the first Dutch supermarket to do so. Initially Albert Heijn will only deliver freshly made meals in a certain area in Amsterdam. Deliveries will be handled by Thuisbezorgd.nl and Deliveroo, NU.nl reports.

"We see an increasing demand among our customers for good meals, like you would make yourself, without having to go into the kitchen", said Marit van Egmond, Albert Heijn's director of commerce. The company described this as the next step in food service.

A 23-year-old woman was arrested at an Albert Heijn store in Eindhoven on Sunday morning. She is suspected of stabbing a colleague in the leg at the store, De Stentor reports.

The woman was arrested around 9:10 a.m. at the AH XL. She stabbed her 44-year-old colleague earlier in the morning. The victim was taken to hospital.

Why the woman attacked her colleague is not yet clear. The police are investigating. 

Lidl Nederland will be the first supermarket to stop selling cigarettes. The chain announced that it will phase out sales until no more cigarettes are sold in Lidl Nederland stores by 2022 at the latest, ANP reports.

According to the supermarket chain, the sales figures for cigarettes declined over the past years and cigarette sales are no longer profitable. But Lidl also took measures to discourage the sale of smoking products, like placing all cigarettes out of sight in stores last year.

Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn pulled a boys' football party game off its shelves after accusations that the party game is sexist and stereotypical, AD reports.

The game pack contains whistles, inflatable footballs and a set of questions with multiple answers. The most obvious criticism of the game is that its packaging states its for boys aged 8 to 13 years old. "Why not for girls?" a football coach asked the newspaper. 

Consumers association Consumentenbond is very critical about the freshness of shrimp sold in Dutch supermarkets Albert Heijn, Jumbo and Lidl. Jumbo's shrimp also contains more preservatives than is permitted by Dutch law, according to the association, NU.nl reports. 

Thirteen supermarket chains affiliated with Superunie quietly recalled waffles and cookies from their shelves on Wednesday because they contain toxic insecticide fipronil, AD reported on Thursday. "We expect more such silent recalls", Wilco Jansen of Emté said to the newspaper. "There are many products with a lot of egg in them. No idea where this is going to end."

Special gluten-free products are not always a healthier alternative to regular products, consumers association Consumentenbond reports. A study done by the association revealed that gluten-free products often contain more fat, sugar and/or salt and less fiber than similar products with gluten, ANP reports.

The association compared the ingredient lists of five gluten-free A-brand products to similar products containing gluten. The results told a scary tale.

Amsterdam alderman Jan-Bert Vroege (D66) accused entrepreneurs and hotel owners in the city of profiteering from Gay Pride, without giving anything back, in a letter to Het Parool. Supermarket chain Albert Heijn and clubs Paradiso and Westerunie are astonished by this accusation, according to the newspaper. 

Albert Heijn plans to start experimenting with cash register-less stores from next year. In these stores, customers can pack their trolleys with what they want and walk out of the store without scanning anything - payment happens automatically, ANP reports.