The Future group has charted out an expansion plan for its food retail venture, Food Bazaar.
Speaking to Indiaretailing, a spokesperson for the Future Group said, “At present, there are 140 Food Bazaar stores, which we seek to expand to 450 stores by 2011.”
The expansion of Food Bazaar will go along with the expansion plan of Big Bazaar, the hypermarket format of the Future Group. Big Bazaar recently opened its 101st store and has set for itself a target of 300 stores by 2011.
While, all Big Bazaar stores, will have a Food Bazaar store, as a Shop in Shop (SIS) format, there will be expansion in the stand alone format of Food Bazaar, as well, the spokesperson added. At present, 40 stores of Food Bazaar are in the stand alone format. So around 100 more stand alone formats of Food Bazaar can be expected, as part of the expansion plan till 2011.
On crossing the 100th mark for its Big Bazaar store, the company said that it is the first hypermarket format worldwide to rollout the fastest 101 stores in a short span of seven years.
Big Bazaar’s journey began in October 2001, when first generation entrepreneur Kishore Biyani opened the country’s first hypermarket retail outlet in Kolkata. The first Food Bazaar format was added as a SIS within Big Bazaar in the year 2002.
— Raja Ghoshal
