Word: supermarketer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tucked in among Home Depot, Starbucks and Target and ringed by acres of asphalt, the Gigante grocery store in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., about half an hour's drive east of Los Angeles, looks like any suburban supermarket. But step inside. Colorful pinatas hang from the ceiling. Bilingual signs promise shoppers el mejor precio. Produce gets lots of territory close by the entrance, where display islands overflow with crunchy jicamas, ripe papayas and dozens of varieties of chili peppers, from fiery serranos to sweet chipotles. The aroma of freshly made tortillas wafts from the bakery. Butchers serve up not only...
...this is no mere bodega. Grupo Gigante, Mexico's third largest supermarket chain, with 270 stores and $3 billion in annual sales, is staking its claim north of the border. It operates four stores in the L.A. area and will open four more this year. Gigante (pronounced hee-gan-tay) aims to become the most popular supermarket among California's 11 million Latinos, most of whom hail from Mexico and think of the stores as old friends. The chain's ultimate goal is even more audacious: "To be the leading supermarket in Latino areas across the United States," says Justo...
Gigante won't provide specific figures, but Frias says, measured in sales per square foot, Latino grocery stores outperform traditional supermarkets by 25% in L.A. neighborhoods where the two go head to head. Indeed, some of the U.S.-based chains are offering Gigante the sincerest flattery by trying to copy its business model. Last year Albertsons, based in Boise, Idaho, the country's second largest supermarket chain, after Kroger, launched an effort to attract Latinos by revamping three slumping Southern California stores in predominantly Latino areas. The company hung Spanish-English signs over the aisles, expanded produce sections 30%, quadrupled...
...Mart, which is now the biggest retailer in Mexico and one reason Gigante's same-store sales there slipped 5.5% during the first nine months of last year, also plans to join the supermarket battle in California. It will build 40 Supercenters --discount variety stores combined with supermarkets--and aims to use experience gained in Mexico to aggressively target U.S. Latinos. "The chains are coming back and moving in," says Soto. "It's going to be a dogfight...
...Safeway in 1967 and eventually rose to the position of country-operations manager, a job that sent him to the Middle East in 1984 to open and manage Safeway's stores in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Eight years later, he returned to the U.S. to open his own supermarket franchises in Oregon and Washington State. He was recruited by Gigante in 1994 to run the company's operations on the Mexican Baja California peninsula, which include licensed RadioShack and Office Depot stores. "The name recognition of Gigante was just awesome," Frias says. "But many of the middle-and low-income...