Our responsibilities
DELIGHTING CUSTOMERS
Our vision
Our mission
Listening to our customers' needs
Doing the right thing
HEALTHY LIVING
We make it easy to choose the best
Helping customers make nutritious choices
Sloan Kettering Institute, and the Children's Cancer
Foundation. Stop Shop raised USD 6 million for the
Jimmy Fund to help children with cancer and search for a
cure and Giant Food contributed more than USD 6 million
in cash, goods and services to support charitable and
community organizations.
Our Giant-Carlisle/Tops arena contributed the largest sum of
charitable donations in its history in 2005, totaling more
than USD 21.4 million in combined cash and product
contributions. This included USD 10.3 million in product
and customer donations for local food banks across
Pennsylvania, New York, northeast Ohio, Maryland, Virginia
and West Virginia, as well as contributions for Children's
Miracle Network hospitals and local non-profit groups.
We also contributed to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in
2005. Ahold donated USD 1 million to the effort, in addition
to other fundraising activities undertaken at our U.S.
companies. U.S. Foodservice donated food, water, the use of
refrigerated trucks and other equipment, and its employees
made deliveries to dozens of Gulf Coast health care facilities,
helping them remain fully operational during the crisis.
Our customers want shopping to be an efficient, pleasant
and relaxed experience. They place a high priority on value
for money, they care about food safety and responsibly-
produced food, and they also want convenience, service,
a relevant selection and guidance so that they can feel good
about the choices they make.
Life is about making choices.
We make it easy for our customers to choose the best for
themselves and the people they care about.
We do this through our strong local brands and by putting
the customer at the heart of every decision. We strive to
stand out from the competition by providing the best
products in a relevant range, the best quality, the best
prices, and the best choices for a healthy lifestyle - all in
the simplest way possible.
We listen carefully to our customers, applying the insights
we gain from them to meet their different needs and wishes.
We are continually developing our store formats and we use
in-depth customer research, new technology, and innovative
ideas to create next generation supermarkets that are in
tune with local customer expectations.
We believe that healthy living is important. Our local brands
offer value, high quality, and healthy choices. We do this in
a simple and responsible way - by providing nutritional
labeling on our private brand products, for example - so
that customers can make informed and confident choices.
We do the right thing for our customers by showing passion
and expertise in every aspect of our business. We continually
share knowledge between our businesses so that we can
make things as simple as possible and provide the best
offering.
Doing the right thing is about offering choices that are
best suited to customer needs. It is not about the broadest
possible assortment, but about enabling customers to
choose the best value for their money. It is also about
understanding our customers' lives and needs and making
their experience with us a good one.
Every Ahold company is committed to making it easy
for customers to choose healthy options. We are sharing
knowledge and initiatives globally to ensure we offer healthy
lifestyle choices in a simple and inspiring way. Our aim is to
have a positive impact on the health of customers in the
markets we serve.
The Ahold Healthy Living Team, set up in 2004, launches
healthy living programs and ensures we share expertise
across our operating companies. We are cooperating with
universities and other bodies, such as the World Health
Organization, to ensure we achieve our ambition of providing
customers with healthy choices based on scientific research
and good social practice.
While our supermarket companies have always offered a
broad range of healthy products, we are striving to improve
our product assortment even further. We want to give
customers ever-healthier alternatives and provide expert
advice and innovative shopping experiences.
In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn stores have introduced
the new Healthy Choice Clover symbol on private brand
products, making it easier for customers to identify healthy
options. Launched in 2005, the symbol now appears on
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