Food Lion Targets Individual Store Upgrades - BALTIMORE

Food Lion will begin remodeling some of the 321 individual stores throughout the company that have not been remodeled in several years as the chain has focused instead on marketwide revamps, Food Lion executives said at the annual investor conference of its Belgian parent company, Delhaize, which was held here last week. “The downside of doing market renewals has been that some stores have been untouched for a long time,” said Cathy Green, chief operating officer, Food Lion, Salisbury, N.C. The company will seek to upgrade 40 of those stores in 2007, along with the previously disclosed market renewals that are planned for Norfolk, Va., and Myrtle Beach, S.C. Rick Anicetti, chief executive officer, Food Lion, said the company plans to extend the market renewal plan to smaller markets in the coming years, and possibly to conduct renewals of groups of stores that share similar attributes even though they are not located in the same market, such as beach-town locations.