Written in LIFESTYLE the 18/9/2022 · 19:12 hs
In Mexico, there are several supermarket chains that are well known to all consumers, such as WalMart, Bodega Aurrera, Soriana, etc. Other chains manage the membership system, for example, Sam’s Club o Costco… but over the years, some were unsuccessful and ended up being absorbed or disappeared.
According to the article ‘The Spanish and the Mexican commercial revolution: the supermarket chains’the first Mexican supermarket was Azcunaga Brotherswhich was installed in Monterrey during 1921… but it took more than 20 years for other chains to appear, due to the scenario of economic instability inside and outside the country.
5 supermarket chains that disappeared in Mexico
One of the largest supermarket chains in France was not successful within the Mexican market: in 1997, the first store was opened south of Mexico City, thanks to a joint venture o temporary strategic partnership with Comercial Mexicana; it came to have branches in Satélite (State of Mexico) and Puebla. By 2003, Comercial Mexicana acquired the five supermarkets that the French company had.
It seems that French supermarkets wanted to ‘conquer’ Mexico, but they stopped trying. Like Auchán, Carrefour came from the hand of Gigante in 1994, to build up to six hypermarkets: three in Mexico City, one in León, another in Toluca and one more in Guadalajara. In total, it had 29 establishments, which were acquired by Chedraui in an operation of 545 million dollars during 2005.
This is one of the most recent cases, since in 2015, Soriana acquired 160 branches from Comercial Mexicana for 39 thousand 194 million pesos. The eating, as it came to be known, was one of the longest-running supermarket chains in Mexico, since it was founded in 1930; In the 1990s, it acquired the Auchán and Kmart stores, which gave it a greater presence throughout the country.
Curious is the fact that Gigante acquired several supermarket chains and in the end it was sold to Soriana. This Mexican company emerged in 1962 in CDMX; At the beginning of the 90s it had a great boom, as it absorbed chains such as ‘White’ and ‘El Sardinero’. Due to financial problems, in 2007, Gigante and all of its stores were purchased by sorianain a transaction for 1.35 billion dollars.
With the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), several companies from the United States arrived in Mexico, one of these was the Kmart chain, which had two stores in the State of Mexico, one in CDMX and built another in Cuernavaca, when was acquired by Comercial Mexicana, just three years after arriving! Currently, the chain only has three stores in the US, due to its bankruptcy.
Lastly, we can talk about the supermarket chain Overlordalthough it has not disappeared as such: in November 2020, Walmart acquired the stores and thus they became Walmart Express, however, Superama is still part of the company’s brand catalog.