Metro Cash & Carry to launch six stores
Metro Cash & Carry is tweaking its expansion strategy, with kiranas taking centre stage, as mom-and-pop stores become the toast of the town owing to the pandemic.
The German cash & carry chain will be coming up with six new stores in the next three quarters in priority markets — Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — which are going to be kiranacentric. These stores will have assortments focusing only on kiranas.
Currently, the wholesale chain has 27 stores that cater to kiranas, Horeca (hotels, restaurants and caterers) and hospitality sectors.
The new stores will be half the size of earlier Metro stores, covering an area of 20,00025,000 square feet. The company now has four wholesale stores that spread above 100,000 square feet with two in Bengaluru, and one each in Hyderabad and Kolkata. Rest of the 23 stores are called Genesis format stores that are spread between 40,000 to 100,000 square feet.
“The construction activities had came to a standstill during the lockdown but now it has picked up and we are close to opening a couple of these new-format stores in October, November and December,” said Arvind Mediratta, managing director and chief executive officer, Metro Cash & Carry.
These new format stores, which will be focussing on the traders segment, will be launched in smaller towns such as Tumkur and Hubli. The firm has also applied cost optimisation programmes which have brought down the capex for the new stores by up to 40 per cent. “We believe that bigger stores don’t mean bigger sales. It only means bigger costs,” said Mediratta.
The company continues to be bullish on kiranas, which generate over 50 per cent of the revenue for the wholesale player.