Is Wal-Marts arrival with supermarket super centers going to change the supermarket landscape?
When I worked as a supermarket executive, we owned a 30,000-square-foot ShopRite in Monticello, N.Y., when Wal-Mart opened one of the first superstores up there. Everyone feared the worst. We opened a brand new 60,000-square-foot ShopRite. As it turned out, while we couldn’t compete with Wal-Mart on their cost of goods, they couldn’t cater to the customer base we had. We were much better in areas like perishables and deli and meats and fish. It’s very hard to compete against a company that large, but you can. You have to operate efficiently, you have to provide better services, and you have to provide a better product. Wal-Mart has a similar land constraint as Wegmans. There just aren’t multiple 15-to-20-acre sites lying around in this part of the world. Q: Are there hot tenants you would love to get? When you’re an owner/developer, and you’re paying taxes, common-area maintenance and mortgages, you just want good tenants who will draw people to your center. The majority of your tenant
