“Carrefour of all food anchors has the most stores in malls in Bucharest. The same goes for the rest of the country, with Carrefour in the lead, followed by Auchan,” says Bogdan Marcu, partner retail agency Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.
The mall-grocery store relationship is mutually beneficial because the mall stands to benefit from the foot traffic a hypermarket generates, and a grocery retailer spends less on the store than it would if it were building it from scratch.
Shopping centers and malls in Romania use mostly hypermarkets as anchors. All networks on this particular market segment are either there or want to enter. Out of discount store chains, Penny Market is active on this particular market, while Lidl is not.
Some supermarkets serve as anchors, as well, i.e. Carrefour Market and Mega Image. Profi, the other player on this segment, does not have any mall stores. When it comes to cash & carry, it is not suited for this retail model.
“The supermarket/hypermarket is an important part of mall customers’ preferences and generates a significant percentage of the daily traffic, so without a real food anchor, the mall won’t be able to keep going for long,” says Mariana Stamate, associate director, head of property management JLL Romania.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)