Small grocery stores in the Czech Republic are 'disappearing', with 287 stores closed in the past year, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen.
In the Czech Republic, 6,969 grocery and general merchandise stores operate on less than 50 square meters. Roughly one-third of these are run by Vietnamese owners.
Back in 2000, there were 10,662 of these small grocery stores, the results of the survey show. Stores with a sales area from 51 to 200 square meters recorded a slight annual increase.
Supermarkets and hypermarkets together account for 81 per cent of total revenue of all food and convenience stores in the Czech Republic. The remaining 19 per cent is produced by smaller shops, Nielsen found.
"We are reducing the size of our hypermarkets, mainly in the non-food section. Our goal is to have shops in size from three to 4.5 thousand square meters," said Jesper Lauridsen, head of Ahold, which operates a network of Albert stores in the Czech Republic.
In an interview with the aktualne.cz news site, Lauridsen said that the Czech Republic does not have too much vacant space for new businesses. Last year, Ahold acquired 35 new hypermarkets and 14 supermarkets via the acquisition of the Interspar / Spar chain.
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article written by László Juhász.
