Premium hypermarket major, Hypercity Retail (India) Ltd is planning to bring in the international food hall retailing concept for the first time in India, under the brand name ?Gourmet City? in 2008. Plans are afoot to set up eight high-end processed food stores, ?Gourmet City?, in metros, with an area size of 10,000 square feet each. Food hall retailing is a unique form of a dine-in concept, currently existing in markets like the UK, US, Singapore, and Australia, where ready-to-eat, organic food is sold, served by chefs, and even home delivered to customers for their convenience.
Ashutosh Chakradeo, business head – food & grocery, Hypercity Retail (India) told FE, ?Similarly, our food hall ?Gourmet City? stores will not sell raw food like packaged pulses. Through a distribution arrangement with UK-based Waitrose, we will sell Waitrose branded ready to eat food through ?Gourmet City?.?
Hypercity Retail is also planning to set up 55 ?Hypercity? hypermarkets (with over 1 lakh square feet each in size), apart from substantial feeder distributors, and warehousing facilities in all the four regions of India in the next five years.
According to Chakradeo, ?We aim to achieve a land bank of 5.5 million square feet in the next five years. We are currently talking to logistics service providers such as Agility, apart from Mahindra & Mahindra, to source logistics services to handle our additional feeder distributors and warehousing facilities operations, across India.?
Interestingly, Hypercity Retail is also planning to launch colour televisions (CTVs), DVD players, and home theatre systems under its private label consumer durables brand, ?Technix?, within Hypercity very soon. The hypermarket currently sells small appliances under the ?Technix? brand.
Competitor, Big Bazaar currently sells consumer electronics and appliances under the ?Koryo? brand. Besides, Hypercity Retail?s concession partners Living Liquids, is planning to bring in at least 40 international wine and beer brands within ?Hypercity? hypermarkets in India.
For the upcoming Christmas season, Hypercity Retail is displaying merchandise of internationally branded ?Lindt?, ?Whittakers?, ?Butlers? chocolates, ?Duchy Originals? cakes and biscuits, ?Amaretti Viginia? cakes, ?Epicure? confectionaries ?Mathew Walkers? cakes and puddings and ?Bon Maman? tarts, apart from ?Waitrose? branded cakes, puddings, confectionary, and chocolates. Chakradeo said, ?This Christmas, we hope footfalls will increase by over 40% compared to the previous Christmas.?