Kroger to build 3 new Marketplace stores in North Texas

Next year, The Kroger Co. plans to open a trio of new Kroger Marketplace supermarkets in North Texas, which includes the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

Cincinnati-based Kroger said this week that the upcoming Marketplace stores, ranging from 100,000 to 130,000 square feet, will be located in Fort Worth, Plano and Melissa, Texas. Compared with traditional Kroger supermarkets, the Marketplace stores feature a multi-department store format offering full-service grocery, pharmacy and expanded general merchandise, including outdoor living products, electronics, home goods, apparel and toys.

Kroger noted that the Fort Worth, Plano and Melissa supermarkets will mark its first new-build Kroger banner stores in North Texas since the opening of a location at 1801 North Lake Forest Dr. in McKinney in 2019. Groundbreaking at the sites is slated for later this summer, when the retailer also will release more details about the store locations and their 2024 opening timetables.

“We are excited to bring these stores to areas with booming growth and a need for access to fresh food and essential items,” Kroger Dallas Division President Keith Shoemaker said in a statement. “All three stores will provide what the community has come to expect from Kroger: full shelves, where everything is fresh and our people are friendly.”
 
Currently, Kroger operates more than 100 stores in North and East Texas and over 200 stores in total across Texas.

More recently in Texas, Kroger this past summer opened an Ocado-automated customer fulfillment center (CFC) in Dallas following a soft launch last spring. The 350,000-square-foot CFC fills online grocery orders for Kroger Delivery service and is supported by automated “spoke” facilities in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and in Oklahoma City. Each spoke serves as a last-mile cross-docking site that extends delivery to more areas, with the Oklahoma City facility enabling Kroger to serve a 36th state, Oklahoma, where it currently lacks brick-and-mortar stores.

Last week, at the Bank of America Consumer & Retail Conference, Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen explained how the retailer’s development of a “seamless” experience between digital and brick-and-mortar helps bring consumers into the Kroger ecosystem and creates more satisfied shoppers.

“After somebody becomes a digital shopper, after a year, they actually come into the store more often than they did before they became a digital shopper,” McMullen said at the event. “Now they only come into the store when they want to, and they actually have higher satisfaction because they’re doing it on their terms.”

On the brick-and-mortar front, Kroger finished its 2022 fiscal year with 2,719 stores in 35 states, reflecting three new openings, one relocation and two operational closings. The year-end count included 2,275 combo grocery stores, 189 Marketplace stores, 134 multi-department stores (Fred Meyer) and 121 price-impact warehouse stores (Food 4 Less/Foods Co.).