Walmart Canada is going to increase its grocery aisles with emphasis on produce as it enters the fourth year of a five-year store renovations program.
It also expects to increase on-line shopping, said Gonzalo Gebara, chief executive, in an interview with the Globe and Mail.
It’s $3.5-billion plan involves renovating 400 stores and developing new distribution centres.
And its suppliers are helping to foot the bills after Walmart announced in 2020 that it would be discounting their invoices. Loblaws quickly followed suit and that sparked outrage and federal politicians called supermarket executives to testify before the House Commons Agriculture Committee which began crafting a code of conduct.
Loblaws, Costco and Walmart remain holdouts on a draft code agreed on by suppliers and other supermarket chains, although Loblaws recently said it will sign if everybody else does.
“The investments that we have been talking about are [going into] remodelling the stores, mainly to bring this up,” Gebara said, gesturing around the grocery section. This store offers more fresh foods than the average location, and represents where the business is headed, he said,
Walmart’s share of the Canadian grocery market sits at about 7.5 to eight per cent, he said, and has increased compared with last year.
The stores perform better than average on categories such as dry goods and global foods, while it lags in areas such as meat and produce. Changing that is among Gebara’s priorities.
Groceries have lower markups than other items in Walmart, but that’s partially offset by higher volume and Gabrera said shoppers visit more often if they’re shopping for groceries and then might pick up items from other departments in the store.
That used to be called loss-leaders – enticing shoppings with low prices on some items knowing they are likely to also buy other regularly-priced products.