Metro Cash & Carry is working towards its expansion strategy by putting kiranas at the centre stage.
The company will be coming up with six new stores in the next three quarters in priority markets, namely Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which are going to be kirana-centric.
These stores will have assortments focusing only on kiranas. The wholesale chain currently 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 20,000-25,000 sq ft. Currently the company has four wholesale stores that spread above 1,00,000 sq ft with two in Bengaluru, and one each in Hyderabad and Kolkata.
The rest of the 23 stores are called Genesis format stores that are spread between 40,000 to 100,000 sq ft. The company is close to opening a couple of these new format stores in October, November and December 2020.
These new format stores which will be focussing on the traders segment will be launched in smaller towns such as Tumkur and Hubli. The company has also applied for cost optimisation programmes which have brought down the capex for the new stores by up to 40 percent.
The company has a remodelling programme for kiranans to convert them into supermarkets to take their sales up by 40-50 percent.
The Bengaluru-headquartered company has also set up kirana success centres in all its stores to give advisory to mom-and-pop players on revamping and competing with online and modern retail.