Wal-Mart looks to Hispanic market
Financial Times
Wal mart plans to open its first Hispanic-focused supermarkets this summer in Arizona and Texas as the largest US retailer continues its drive to expand its dominance of the US grocery business.
The pilot stores, named Supermercado de Walmart, will open in Phoenix and Houston in remodelled 39,000 sq ft locations occupied previously by two of Wal-Mart’s Neighborhood Market stores.
The retailer said that the stores were in “strongly Hispanic neighbourhoods” and would feature a “new lay-out, signing and product assortment designed to make them even more relevant to local Hispanic customers”. The staff will also be bilingual.
Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club warehouse store also plans to open a 143,000 sq ft Hispanic-focused store called Más Club in Houston this year.
Several leading regional US supermarket chains already operate Hispanic store brands, including Publix in Florida, which operates three Publix Sabor markets, and HEB in Texas, which opened a Mi Tienda store in Houston in 2006.
The markets include elements such as cafés serving Latino pastries and coffee, and full service meat and fish counters.
Leading retailers are also pursuing Hispanic consumers online, with Best Buy and Home Depot having launched Spanish-language versions of their e-commerce sites in recent months.
Eduardo Castro-Wright, the head of Wal-Mart’s US stores since 2005, has also been an advocate of testing new smaller, more focused formats, and raised the idea of turning the Neighbourhood Market into a Hispanic-style bodega concept several years ago.
He has also developed Wal-Mart’s efforts to customise its larger Supercenter stores, which have been grouped according to differing community profiles, such as urban, suburban, Hispanic and African-American, with customised merchandise.
A 195,000 sq ft Supercenter that opened in Texas last year included a tortilleria bakery, Hispanic foods and a larger selection of Spanish-language music and DVDs.
Mr Castro-Wright was previously head of Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary, whose store network ranges from large US-style Supercenters to small local bodegas, an upmarket supermarket chain and two restaurant chains.
Last year, Wal-Mart also began testing four new 10,000 sq ft Marketside convenience grocery stores in the Phoenix area – its first new format in a decade. Tesco, the UK retailer, also has more than 25 of its small Fresh & Easy markets in the Phoenix area.
Wild Thing’s comment………
I love Mexican food it is one of my favorite, I also LOVE it when people come to our country and assimilate to our culture, our language and show they want to be Americans, not just live here. Just a question, why can’t they do this and not be bilingual?
If Nicholas and I drive about an hour and a half from our home we can go to a little store that is owned and run by a Greek family. We go there to buy certain Greek foods for some of the things I cook from Nick’s mothers recipes. The owner came here in his 30’s and is now in his 60’s. He takes great pride in speaking English and only the foods have Greek names, the signs in his store are all in English. This is the best example of what I am talking about. This is nice what this man has done, he loves our country, but Wal-Mart seems not to want to do this kind of thing.
Last year I did a post about Wal-Mart putting a special food sections in some of their stores for the Muslims that live here.
“Wal-Mart Tweaks Store for Arab-Americans Wal-Mart Does Homework to Lure Middle Eastern Shoppers in Detroit-Area Store DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) Faten Saad knew she wasn’t in a typical Wal-Mart when she saw an end-of-the-aisle display featuring Mamool.”
….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
The problem I see with this is that the more you cater to Hispanics in their own language, the less they’ll ever learn English. Why should they even put forth the effort to learn English when everything now is in Spanish?
Our ancestors used to be proud to have assimilated into the Great Land of Freedom and learned the ways and the language and allowed more freedom for their children to be who they were. They escaped persecution, potato famines, war. And I also, do not mind someone who comes here legally and at least makes an attempt to assimilate into our culture and do what’s right. I can’t stand uppity illegals who claim they have a right to be here. No, you lost the Mexican American war-you shouldn’t be mad at us, but at your own government for putting Santa Ana in charge! Fight your own battles down there. We had to and we won the day. I’m sorry Walmart feels it has to have private stores for the hispanics. They already sell plenty of hispanic goods in the store already. What will it be next-the AlQaeda Walmart, The Talibanmart? Sushi Walmart? How about Kwanzaamart or The Blarneystonemart? See how stupid it is to fall in to the pc world? It becomes a never ending story.
I realize that Wal-Marts are like cockroaches, everywhere except in the cold states. But living in Colorado I have to smile at this. I thought they went Mexican a long time ago.
Reminds me of some friends telling me about their experience in a Montana town. They went to eat in a former Mexican restaurant that had been taken over by some Chinese people and was converting to Chinese food. They asked the Chinese waitress for a pizza. The waitress conferred for a few minutes with the Mom and Pop owners. The Pop came to the table and asked, “Do you know how to make pizza?” My friendship was threatened when I asked, ” Who in H___ would go into a Mexican restaurant run by Chinese and ask for an Italian dish?” Well, anybody who’d go into a Mexican-emphasis China-Mart and think they’re buying American.
This is a big tidal wave that won’t slow down. Some of the stores in my town have more signs in Spanish than in English.
My apartment complex is filling up with Hispanics. Lots of them don’t speak English. Lots are bilingual but Spanish is their first language. My neighbors speak good English, but speak Spanish with their children so the kids, second or third generation American, will still have Espanol as their first language. They shop at a Fiesta store, a Hispanic grocery. Even though it is miles away and there are four other groceries within a mile, they buy from the Hispanic store. Their assimilation is questionable. I really don’t know if their first allegience would be to America or Mexico.
I think it is a bad omen for businesses to appeal to immigrants in their former language.
Or maybe Wal-Mart is trying to keep the wolf away from the door. But it’s too late for that. That wolf, the Union has been after Wally’s for a long time and with ‘Zero’s’ help they will run that into the ground too.
Everything the Union touches, is overpriced, not quality workmanship, and down right shoddy.
One year I worked as a jobber for Davey-Mckey an outfit out of England. It was a greenfield(meaning starting from a green field a Turnkey operation) installation of a Continuous Caster for a steel mill. After a year and a half the job had gotten bogged down, mainly because of the Union Electricians, Christmas was coming and their output started slowing down because the job was finally near completion and the owners were already behind schedule and there was a penalty clause in their contract, i.e., for every day over the scheduled finish time limit it cost the Owners so much money. The Electricians didn’t want to finish til after Christmas for fear of layoffs. So they were basically sabotaging the job. By over stuffing conduits, pulling the wrong cable, no junction boxes just little shit that cost the company more money so they could stay longer. This is the kind of job you get with Union representation and the Union Bosses were in full support of this kind of behavior.
It got so bad at one point Union Journeyman were calling me and asking me how to wire DC motor’s, there were exactly 4 wires to these motors, labeled A1, A2 and F1 and F2, the Blueprint clearly pointed this out and the feeder to the each motor said the same thing, so at this point all you can do is hold their hand and show them how the dam thing went together. Unbelievable. More unbelievable is these Journeymen were getting paid 35 dollars an hour, not to know how to wire a simple DC shunt motor.
That was the worst Union job I have ever seen and they got away with it.
BobF., I agree so much.
Lynn, your so right!!!
“See how stupid it is to fall in to the pc world? It becomes a never ending story.”
Horace, LMAO what a great story. Thank you.
Tom, thanks for sharing about that yes I agree too, it is a bad omen to see this happening. Catering like this really weakens our country.
“I really don’t know if their first allegience would be to America or Mexico.”
I wonder too.
Mark, wow amazing, thank you so much for sharing about that. Very interesting and telling too how they operate like that.