According to the information provided by Carrefour on Tuesday, the stores of the franchisee are now called Pronto Express, with Express being the brand the French chain uses for standalone convenience stores. They are operated by Pronto SRL, while when part of the LaDoiPasi network the operator was For Family, a company controlled by local entrepreneur Gabriel Cristian Sandu.
Pronto SRL does not show on the Trade Registry website, so there is no information about its shareholders, but the addresses of the six stores, which can still be found on the LaDoiPasi website are the same. The six stores are all in Bucharest.
Asked by ZF for comment, neither Metro Cash&Carry nor Gabriel Cristian Sandu had anything to say.
Gabriel Cristian Sandu built the For Family business in 2012 and later became a LaDoiPasi franchisee. He said this spring he planned to have 100 stores under this brand. This is not his first business, as he also developed the 90 store GSM retail chain Proton, which he sold to Vodafone in 2008, and used the money from that deal to finance the food retail business.
Pronto Express will include seven stores, the already existing six For Family stores and a new one in Militari in the western part of Bucharest. The retail area of the seven stores ranges from 40 to 80 square meters and they sell 2,000 to 2,500 products.
Carrefour chose to partner with local entrepreneurs or people who already had an operational store in Romania to develop this retail format.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)