SUPERMARKETS EXPECTED TO GROW
Trade group head: Grocery chains likely to continue expansion in 2024
As grocery stores jockey for position in the battle for market share in Connecticut, the head of the state’s supermarket trade group says chains with a presence here will continue to grow.
Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, said Tuesday there are about a dozen new locations in various stages of store development in the pipeline. Many are unlikely to be completed this year.
“I think that shows we’re really ripe for expansion,” Pesce said. “That kind of activity is pretty good for a small state like Connecticut.”
Orange First Selectman Jim Zeoli shares Pesce’s view of how robust Connecticut’s supermarket sector is.
Zeoli said attempts town officials made to fill the now vacant former Christmas Tree Outlet location in the shopping center off Marsh Hill Road were rebuffed because Brixmore, the company that manages the property, was showing the retail space to grocery store chains.
“The leasing agent told us they had just shown the property to a pair of supermarkets,” Zeoli said. “But they won’t tell us which ones, which leads me to believe its a supermarket that doesn’t already have a presence
in the area.”
It’s a scenario repeating itself all across Connecticut. New supermarkets under construction, old grocery stores getting refurbished, and new and existing chains with plans for development.
This year kicked off with a new Whole Foods Market opening in South Windsor during January. Whole Foods also has a Stamford store under construction and is expected to anchor the Stonebridge Crossing mixed use complex in Cheshire. And by the end of the month, Massachusetts-based Big Y announced it was expanding into Brookfield and Westport, acquiring spaces that were previously thought to
become the first Amazon Fresh grocery stores in Connecticut.
In addition to the Brookfield and Westport stores, Big Y will also open a store in Middletown in May, company officials have said.
Despite pulling out of those two locations, another Amazon Fresh had also been widely expected to open in Orange in a Boston Post Road shopping center owned by furniture retailer Raymour & Flanigan. Zeoli said he hasn’t heard anymore about Amazon Fresh opening there, but Orange town officials have seen stirrings of construction activity in the vacant storefront there.
And while Whole Foods just opened its South Windsor location in January, it also has a store under construction in Stamford, as well as one that is scheduled to be going before planning officials in Old Saybrook early this year.
Both Whole Foods, which has 11 stores in Conecticut, and Amazon Fresh are owned by online retailing giant Amazon.
Some industry watchers say that even as its Whole Foods chain grows, the Amazon Fresh line appears to have essentially pulled out of Connecticut for the foreseeable future.
“Amazon has data collection and analysis as well as computer modeling that is exceptional,” said David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac University’s School of Business, “My sense is they looked at the data they had in Connecticut and decided they couldn’t do well here.”
Amazon Fresh used most of last year to rethink its expansion strategy and rework the concept in stores it has in southern California and parts of Illinois. Stores in those markets began refocusing their product mix last summer, and during Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts on Feb. 1, the company’s chief executive officer Andy Jassy seemed encouraged by the earlly results.
“If you want to serve as many grocery needs as we do, you have to have a mass physical presence and that’s what
we’ve been trying to do with Fresh over several years,” Jassy said, adding the company has been testing a new version of the Fresh format in a few locations near Chicago and southern California. “It’s just a few months in, but the results thus far are very promising and on almost every dimension.”
Jassy said the company “has been spending increasing amounts of time and effort here trying to make it easier for customers to be able to shop between the nonperishables, and then our selection of Whole Foods as well as Fresh.”
Meanwhile, Wegmans, the upscale supermarket chain headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., has its first Connecticut store under construction in Norwalk. That store is expected to open in the
spring of 2025.
Burt Flickinger, managing director of the New York Citybased consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said he expects Wegmans to announce further expansion plans in Connecticut, whether it is later this year or at some point in 2025. Connecticut represents “the doughnut hole” between Wegmans stores in eastern Massachusetts and the New York area.
“They need stores in contiguous markets to make their supply chain operate more efficiently,” Flickinger said. “They are saturating the area from Buffalo to Brooklyn and Baltimore with their stores.”
Flickinger said officials at Wegmans are eager to show New England consumers that the closure of the chain’s store in Natick, Mass. last summer was an aberration. “That was an embarrassing failure, the first Wegmans to close with a long
lease,” he said.
While Wegmans caters to affluent clientele, Aldi targets a more cost-conscious customer. The German retailer is expanding in Connecticut, having announced in late January it will open a store in Plainville Commons.
Aldi currently has 31 stores in Connecticut. It’s primary rival for cost-conscious shoppers is another German chain, Lidl, that is slowly inching closer to western Connecticut. Aldi has already announced new locations in Westchester and Rockland counties in New York State. Lidl doesn’t have any stores in New England.
Many of the grocery store chains expanding in Connecticut are quite secretive about their plans
Retail experts have told Hearst Connecticut Media that they expect either Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s will be the
Stonebridge Crossing tenant, which is in the early stages of construction in Cheshire. But all parties involved, including officials at both chains, developers and town officials have refused to identify which chain will serve as the anchor
A similar situation involves the Meadow Commons mixed use complex in Newington, where Grossman Development Group is handling the retail component. Jeremy Grossman, a senior vice president with the Massachusetts-based development firm, told Hearst Connecticut Media last year that Meadow Commons will have 99,500 square feet of retail space, with 45,000 square feet of that space carved out for a yet-unannounced “national grocery chain that doesn’t have a presence in the market” anchoring the development.
Grossman has not returned calls from Hearst Connecticut
Media seeking an update on the retail space.
Flickinger said he expects North Carolina-based Fresh Market and Sprouts, which is headquartered in Arizona, to expand in Connecticut.
Fresh Market already has stores in Avon, Guilford and Westport. A company spokeswoman has repeatedly denied Fresh Market has expansion plans in Connecticut.
Sprouts has about 380 stores in 23 states, but does not have a presence in Connecticut. The closest stores to Connecticut are in New Jersey, where Sprouts debuted in Marlton in 2019. The company opened a second New Jersey store in Haddon Township in 2023 and announced plans in November 2023 to open another location in Aberdeen. Sprouts officials announced plans in September 2023 to open more than 40 new stores across the country during 2024.