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Originally Posted by keg92101
Does anyone know what WalMart is calling their urban prototype going into TR Produce?
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I spoke with the General Contractor at TR PRoduce. They are currently building demising walls for the 15,000 sf space to break it up into 3 spaces. He did not know who was going to occupy them but he didn't think that they were all going to one user.
Wal-Mart goes small to take on UK's Tesco
By Jonathan Birchall in New York
Sunday Jan 13 2008 20:05
SCOOPWal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) will open small-format grocery stores in Arizona this year under the trade name, "Marketside", going head to head with the new Fresh & Easy markets being rolled out in the US by Tesco, the UK grocer.
The new pilot stores are about 20,000 sq ft, a 10th of the size of the Supercenters that have been driving Wal-Mart's growth over the past two decades.
The retailer has secured leases on four properties south-east of Phoenix, some of them only a mile from locations where Tesco is setting up its 10,000 sq ft discount grocery stores.
The stores, likely to be open by the summer, are the first new concept launched by the retailer in the US for a decade, and are being developed as the company slows its planned growth of Supercenters.
Unlike the giant stores, the planning process for the new Marketside stores does not require public consultation, potentially creating a way for Wal-Mart to grow into cities and states where its Supercenter expansion has been slowed by union-backed political opposition.
In addition to its 2,435 US Supercenters, Wal-Mart also sells food at 128 Neighborhood Markets, a grocery format the company launched in 1998.
Wal-Mart declined to give details of the new stores, but the company characterised them as comparable with its existing Neighborhood Markets, which it uses to "fill in" between Supercenters. At about 35,000 sq ft, the Neighborhood Markets are roughly the size of a traditional US supermarket.
"We trial and test lots of different new formats and this would be an example of that," the company said.
But its new logo, filed in planning documents in Arizona and consisting of green lettering with a stylised tomato, egg and grape topped by a Wal-Mart blue star, suggests the format will - like Tesco's Fresh & Easy - have a far stronger stress on fresh foods.
The retailer has also registered a number of new trade names in recent months, such as City Thyme and Field & Vine, which some industry analysts believe could be used for new private-label fresh-food offerings.
Wal-Mart recently hired Jack Sinclair, a veteran of the UK grocery industry, to head its supermarket business.
Operating the smaller stores is likely to require a significant shift in an operation developed to serve the Supercenter.
All the stores are in street-corner properties that were formerly occupied by drug stores. The company has applied for wine and beer licences for stores in the fast-growing cities of Gilbert, Tempe and Mesa, and has additional leases in the city of Chandler.
There are already 12 Supercenters and five Neighborhood Markets in the Arizona area. All the buildings were previously drug stores that were acquired and then sold off by CVS, the pharmacy group, as part of the break-up of the old Albertson's supermarket group in 2006.
The four stores are located at:
Mesa: 7561 E Baseline RoadGilbert: 910 E Elliott RoadChandler: 950 N McQueen RoadTempe: 838 W Elliott Road.
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