Walmart's Northeast Strategy
October 14, 2011 | 1 min to read
DALLAS – To understand a Walmart grocery store, consider Ro-Tel, a combination of diced tomatoes and green chilies in a can.
The Texas kitchen staple recently sold for $1.20 a can at an Albertson’s grocery store here. A Walmart supercenter a few miles away sold it for 88 cents. But it was Walmart Neighborhood Market – a Walmart selling only groceries – that offered Ro-Tel for a steal: just 78 cents on sale.
“You can’t beat that,’’ shopper Lajuanda Bennett said recently as she pushed a shopping cart heavy with Ro-Tel cans through the store.
Walmart Neighborhood Market now wants to make its debut in the Northeast with a store in Somerville, promising these kind of rock-bottom prices to a region with some the nation’s highest grocery costs. Grocery prices in the Northeast run more than 3 percent above the national average, and rose nearly 6 percent over the past year, according to the US Labor Department.
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