Most remote Walmart site is in Alaska

Kodiak location supports residents, bears and Pitbull

Only one Walmart store has the unlikely distinction of being both the most remote of the company’s more than 4,700 stores in the continental U.S. and of bringing a Grammy-winning rap artist to town.

Walmart’s discount store in Kodiak, Alaska, is also the only one operating in the habitat that supports the world’s largest bears.

The store is supplied by cargo ships — Kodiak is an island community — because transport by plane would cost too much.

Only about an eighth of the island has a road system, said Jeff Sanford, a past president of Kodiak’s chamber of commerce and the lending branch manager of a local bank.

The biggest industry in Kodiak is commercial fishing, he said, but tourism comes in second. Tourists pour in each summer in hopes of spotting a bear or catching a glimpse of a humpback whale.

“Having Walmart in a small town in the North Pacific, for the volume of things that we consume … is very important to our community,” Sanford said.

And in a state where the cost of living is second only to Hawaii’s, Walmart “keeps our cost of living down for sure,” Sanford said. “They do a really good job of holding down prices on things like TVs and other things we’ve grown accustomed to.”

“Walmart must do a really good job at negotiating shipping rates, because everything has to come in on these giant containers on these big cargo ships,” Sanford said. “That happens once a week.”

“I’m sure because of who they are, they’re able to negotiate some better prices with some of the shipping companies,” he said.

Kodiak’s Walmart store is the second southernmost in Alaska, after Ketchikan’s. The city of Kodiak sports about 5,260 residents and is the only city on Kodiak Island, the largest in an archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska. The island chain is home to several smaller communities and about 3,500 Kodiak bears.

About 90% of the island is designated brown bear habitat, protected as the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge.

Outdoor enthusiasts plan

ning to fish a local stream or go for a hike may want to stop by the Kodiak Walmart first to pick up some bear bells or spray.

Bear bells are meant to alert the bears of a human presence because a surprised bear can quickly become an aggressive bear. The bells currently run from $3.58 to $11.58 on the store’s website.

But in case of a close encounter with a 10-foot bear, the $40 can of bear pepper spray — with holster — may come in handy. It has a “safe” range of about 35 feet, according to a promotional video on the Kodiak store’s website.

Those encounters are most likely to occur on hiking trails or in the brush, outside of town.

Walmart opened the store in Kodiak on March 29, 1999, which would have been Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton’s 81st birthday.

The store was the fourth that the Bentonville-based retailer opened in Alaska, but is the only one operating in Kodiak, a Walmart spokesman said. It’s open year-round, he said, powering through Alaska’s long, dark winters.

Employing about 135 workers, the store sells general merchandise such as apparel, furniture and electronics. It also has a small grocery section consisting mainly of dry goods, produce and a limited supply of frozen foods.

Many of these items are available for pickup or delivery when ordered online, the spokesman said.

The store also has the amenities of many Walmart stores, such as a pharmacy, bakery, photo center, auto care services and a wireless services center.

Grocery competition in Kodiak comes from a nearby Safeway and a smaller local grocery store, Sanford said.

A LinkedIn page for the the Kodiak Walmart shows entry-level wages run between $17 and $26 an hour.

Walmart has 2,662 employees in Alaska, according to the company’s website. They earn an average wage of $19.10.

Walmart has nine retail units in Alaska — another discount store like Kodiak’s and seven Supercenters.

Three of the Supercenters are in Anchorage, about 250 air miles northeast of Kodiak. The state’s northernmost store is in the town of Wasilla.

The Kodiak Walmart unexpectedly found itself in the national spotlight in 2012 when it won a contest that brought entertainer Pitbull to town.

In a Walmart Inc. advertising campaign that summer, the Walmart store that got the most followers on its Facebook page would win a visit from Pitbull.

In response, some internet high jinks spawned a movement called #exilepitbull that urged people to vote to send Pitbull to Walmart’s most remote location — Kodiak.

The Kodiak store won with more than 70,000 “likes.”

An ABC News story at the time said the musical artist didn’t perform, but received the keys to the city at a community event and visited the Kodiak Walmart, where he was given a survival kit that included bear repellent.

“One of Pitbull’s nicknames is Mr. Worldwide,” Walmart’s spokesman said, “so the store often refers to itself as ‘The WORLDWIDE’ Kodiak Walmart on its social accounts.”

But that appearance wasn’t the end of Pitbull’s relationship with Walmart. He performed in June as the star act at Walmart’s annual employee celebration in Fayetteville.