Star Bazaar Expanding To Make Room For More Groceries

Star Bazaar is undergoing a revamp to accommodate more fresh groceries and apparel and Tata’s Trent (the retail arm of the Tata Group) has brought in specialists from their British partner, Tesco to help remodel the supermarket.

In England, Tesco provides customers with everything from groceries to ready-to-eat meals and more, but the company also said that their changes won’t make the Star Bazaar outlets exact replicas of the Tesco stores. David Willmott, business coach at Tesco talked about the remodelling and said, “Our intention is to make the shopping experience at Star truly world class while retaining the elements that build its local relevance. Better visibility and display of the promotional lines is also very crucial to make customers aware of the best-priced products in the store.”

Almost 50% of the overall retail basket in India is food and grocery, along with personal and home products. But Trent wants to focus more on fresh produce, bakery and meat through the expansion.

“A lot more space and emphasis will be on fresh food. We do a lot of sourcing directly from farms, so the margins are good. A full-fledged design team from Tesco helped in designing the new store,” said Jamshed Daboo, managing director of Trent Hypermarket, the equally owned joint venture between the Tata Group and UK’s Tesco. 

Unlike their rivals, Trent runs their company in three formats – dailies, market and hyper – under one “Star” banner and opened seven stores in 2015, bringing their total to 24. Not only are they looking at an expansion of Star Bazaar, they are looking to double their outlets to 50 in the current financial year.