I recall that my local Edeka, before Edeka got so big, gave a lot of room to the local managers, who were ex-rocker types who were really good at employing local young dudes who probably weren't all that employable elsewhere (and who did a fine job as it turned out).

Enough that I kind of assumed it was a franchise rather than just a chain, until they started buying up all the Kaisers.

So maybe that's part of their strategy, to give the managers more responsibility to differentiate their stores instead of making them all the same?

If so I wonder how they incentivize that.