View from a Rhino House: what, no humbugs?

Discount retailer Lidl faces a €200,000 Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents & ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium this week, saying it would hand out 5 four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the €20 dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake & chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer & 1.500 people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen (Dutch for “luxury for everyone”).

By the end of the 24-hour campaign Lidl was committed to delivering 7,500 dinners. To quell rumors that the store chain had been caught-out, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, & branded the campaign “a success”.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” a spokesman said.

Not quite a balanced diet, but very welcome at this time of year, no doubt.

The better class of banker…..