Smart & Final Expanding Store Size to Attract Consumers

LOS ANGELES — Smart & Final here plans to open three more expanded stores, called Smart & Final Extra, this year and additional locations next year, Randall Oliver, a company spokesman, told SN. The non-member warehouse store chain began opening stores of 25,000 to 35,000 square feet in early August as it relocated existing stores, which averaged 17,000 square feet. Most of the Extra stores are in former drug store locations, he noted. Smart & Final will open its largest location — a 35,000-square-foot Extra — in November in Montebello, in Los Angeles County. The chain expects to expand more stores in L.A. County and the San Francisco Bay Area next year, Oliver said. As SN reported in April, the stores feature expanded produce selections, including wet racks and more loose fresh produce items, expanded frozen and deli sections "and a lot more sizes that would appeal to typical household retail consumers," Oliver said, plus the chain's first health and beauty and baby care sections. "We saw an opportunity to enhance the ability of the stores to serve the weekly shopping needs of household consumers while at the same time trying to make the stores better for business customers by consolidating bulk items that are most frequently purchased into a single section along the stores' back walls," Oliver said, "and after less than two months, the initial group of stores are performing extremely well."

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