Supermarket launches new service on WhatsApp

Rewe is going into the future: The supermarket has announced a cooperation with WhatsApp, which should save customers time and nerves. Incidentally, the environment also benefits. Rewe is the first food retailer in Germany to offer the new service, beating out Aldi and Lidl.

They consume vast amounts of resources, clog mailboxes and usually end up unread garbage after a few days: advertising brochures. More and more retailers are doing away with the anachronistic form of advertising and are switching to digital options. After Obi finally drew the line, Rewe now follows. In contrast to the hardware store chain, Rewe does not (only) rely on its own app.

Rewe sends weekly brochure via WhatsApp

Instead of this Rewe customers now receive their Rewe brochure via WhatsApp. Anyone who goes to the rewe.de/whatsapp website can subscribe to the digital flyer. It’s child’s play: simply enter your postal code, select a Rewe branch – that’s it. Every Sunday you will then receive a WhatsApp message from Rewe containing a link to the supermarket chain’s latest brochure. The classic Rewe brochure in paper form should then be completely discontinued in 2023.

Rewe is a pioneer in Germany and is outperforming the discounters like Aldi and Lidl. “We are pleased that our partner REWE is the first food retailer in Germany to use WhatsApp Business Solutions to digitize its print brochure and reach new and existing customers via one of their preferred communication channels,” says Claudia Studtman, who works at WhatsApps Parent company Meta is responsible for the retail sector (source: w&v)

For Rewe manager Bastian Tassew, the cooperation with WhatsApp also underlines the change towards more sustainability that the group has made in recent years.

WhatsApp offers a lot, but other messengers also have great features:

Need to catch up on the Rewe brochure

In our short test, Rewe’s new WhatsApp service cuts a fine figure. Everything was easily explained and worked smoothly. With the brochure itself, however, there is still a need to catch up, because the consists only of an image with an attached link (see picture above). So if you want to see all current special offers from Rewe, you have to leave Messenger. It would be more convenient if Rewe sent the entire brochure as a picture message.