BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has published the trademark for its new pilot small-format "Marketside" grocery stores, which are expected to open in the Phoenix area over the summer, reported The Financial Times.
The retailer has applied for liquor licenses at three locations for stores that are expected to have around 15,000 square feet of selling space, according to planning documents—less than half the size of the 130 Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market supermarkets that are currently its smallest U.S. format.
Details of the new Marketside stores—the first new [image-nocss] store banner to be used by Wal-Mart in the United States in two decades—were first reported in the Financial Times in January.
The banner, published on the website of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, includes the word "marketside" in lower-case green lettering, adjacent to a stylized pile of pile of fresh food items.
The new pilot stores are all located southeast of Phoenix in areas where the U.K.'s Tesco, the UK supermarket group, has begun rolling out its new small-format Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery/convenience stores.
Wal-Mart has played down the significance of the new format, arguing that the stores represent another variation on its existing neighborhood market format; however, the stores are widely expected in the industry to reflect a new, more focused approach to developing its own private-label fresh and prepared foods, as part of a broad push by Wal-Mart to improve its performance in the grocery business, the report said.
Safeway, one of the big three traditional U.S. supermarket groups, is also developing a new small-format neighborhood store at locations around San Jose in northern California, where Tesco is also securing sites for its Fresh & Easy stores, said the report.
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