Cora will not focus on food

Got used to going to the supermarket for some salami, edible oil or some fruit? Well, now that the retailers selling goods on a several hectare wide area have arrived, get ready for something else: your cart will be filled with shirts and antiperspirants or, who knows, maybe vacuum cleaners or skis. This is because, beyond a certain size, the “giant” retailers focus on non-foodstuffs. One such retailer is Cora, whose first supermarket will open in Bucharest this fall.
Whereas the small neighbourhood shops sell primarily foodstuffs, the wider the store gets (as in the case of supermarkets, which go beyond the 1,000 sqm border), the larger the share of space and of sales claimed by non-foodstuffs.
A 60%-40% ratio for foodstuffs is therefore only natural for the Metro stores (6,000-8,000 sqm in store space), or even for the Carrefour hypermarket, which is now nearly 9,000 sqm wide.
The first stores over 15,000 sqm wide will open on the Romanian market this year and once they do, the non-foodstuffs will account for a larger share in the sales than the foodstuffs. “We will develop an extra large store concept, with the commercial area reaching 16,000 sqm, twice the surface anyone on the market is offering now. Under the circumstances, non-foodstuffs will come to account for 55% of the sales,” said Frederic Bout, marketing manager of Cora Romania, the company that will operate the Cora hypermarket, now under construction in the Granitul-Pantelimon area in Bucharest. The hypermarket opens this fall and, as company officials say, it is planning to see more than 100 million euros in sales every year.
“Our goal is to open four stores in Bucharest and then move on to the main cities in the country,” Bout explains.
The Carrefour Hypermarket (nearly 9.000 sqm wide) logged 100 million euros in sales last year. The second Carrefour is due in the Grozavesti area this fall, with the third one scheduled to open in Colentina next year.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro