The company was founded in 1984 by Götz Rehm and distributes food and textiles, produced according to ecological aspects, under the trademark Alnatura.

The company is based on ideas of the esoteric anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, which is founder Götz Rehm strongly influenced by.

Alnatura currently operates 107 supermarkets in Germany, each with 500 to 800 square meters of retail space, mainly in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Initial plans to conceptualize the business as stores for children's clothing made from cotton or a chain of vegetarian self-service restaurants, were discarded.

sustainable middle class) from the EthikBank [de], and Rehn was nominated for "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the auditors Ernst & Young.

Because of a cooperation agreement between the two businesses from the 1980s, dm had the right to a say in Alnatura's selection process concerning new sales partners.

[16] Since 2015 the products were delivered through a proper online shop [de] (see E-Commerce) in cooperation with the Delticom subsidiary Gourmondo Food GmbH to the following 19 European countries: Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden.

[24] In September 2016, the first eggs of the Alnatura Bruderküken-Initiative were regionally delivered; the concept is planned to be applied to more and more stores.

[25] The initiative aimed to exclusively offer eggs of hens whose male siblings are raised to be broiler chickens and are not killed when they are still chicks.

[29] In September 2018, it was announced that Alnatura would expand their cooperation with bringmeister.de [de][30] and would remove single-use plastic bags for fruits and vegetables [dead link, Search in web archives: Bio-Händler schafft Plastik-Einwegtüten für Obst und Gemüse ab].

[33] The company's key figures according to the attested annual financial statements (fiscal year from October 1 until September 30 respectively; annual average of employees including trainees):[34] In Germany, other trading partners such as the German retail chain Edeka and the drugstore chain Müller also started cooperating and selling Alnatura's proprietary products.

[38] In Austria, like in Germany, Alnatura was mostly marketed by the drugstore chain dm and various reform houses ("Reformhaus") at first.

[39][40] Alnatura is part of the IFOAM-Organics International[41] and a member of the Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelgesellschaft [de] (BÖLW; engl.

[43] Götz Rehn, the founder and director of Alnatura, was greatly influenced by the Anthroposophic movement, instilling its values to the brand.

[46] In 2011, Alnatura was named "Pioneer of Organic Retail Markets" in first place, and was decorated with the title of Germany's most sustainable business.

[50] At the end of November 2019, the founder and director Götz Rehn accepted German Sustainability Award Architecture.

Alnatura convinced "with its extraordinarily holistic quality, which is pioneering and fathoms the opportunities of sustainable constructions".

This was preceded by a statement of Götz Rehn (founder and managing director), in which Christmas bonuses, holiday pay, capital-forming benefits, contribution to the pension scheme and value-added participation were listed as voluntary benefits, which is why, according to his opinion, the model of agreed wages and the Alnatura payment model are difficult to compare.

"[58] In 2015, a part of the workforce in a store in Bremen tried to elect a second works council of the company, which was met with resistance from the management.

[59] Kai Wargalla [de], an employee, told Radio Bremen: "The election was prevented by tactical games.

Kai Wargalla pointed out that the company stalled for time and that the employees of 2016 engaged in participation were either no longer working at the store or tired of the dispute.