Shashwat Goenka, scion of R.P. Sanjiv Goenka-owned Spencer’s Retail, is repositioning the brand as a ‘food-first’ retailer. The company is looking to differentiate its hypermarkets by offering gourmet products apart from general merchandise.

The 23-year-old Wharton-educated Goenka will be rolling out Epicuisine hub, a gourmet and live kitchen inside the Spencer’s hypermarket formats to cater to the growing demand for gourmet products.

“We wanted to see how we could differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Consumers are aware about new products and want to try it out. Epicuisine hub is experiential in design and will offer prepared and packaged food,” Goenka, Sector Head, Spencer’s Retail, told Business Line .

Epicusine will be rolled out in revamped stores and will be retailed along with apparel and home improvement products.

Spencer’s renewed focus on food comes at a time when most retailers are focusing on high margin categories, such as apparel and other lifestyle categories.

Spencer’s Retail has 29 hypermarkets and 124 supermarket pan-India. “We are planning to roll out 80 hypermarkets over the next four years in metros and tier 1 and 2 cities,” he said, without divulging the investments.

Goenka said going forward the company would focus on compact hypermarkets, which means most of its stores would be spread over 25,000-40,000 sq ft. “We have realised that compact hypermarkets can be a vehicle for future growth. We are just trying to get the product mix right”.

The company is also keeping prices affordable.

Spencer Retail achieved total sales of Rs 1,400 crore for the year ended March 31, 2013. According to industry watchers, hypermarkets contribute over 50 per cent to the company’s total revenue.

Goenka said it was through with the store rationalisation process where it had closed a number of non-performing outlets. “We are profitable at store level and with our new additions, we hope to break even at the company level as well,” he added.

Epicuisine food hubs will also sell cheese, dairy and meat products from across the continent.

The RPG Group was among the pioneers of organised retailing and started rolling out stores by the mid-1990s.

Asked if the company was planning to shift focus to apparel, like several other retailers, Goenka said the company was keen to focus on high-margin categories, such as apparel. “Currently, food accounts for about 75 per cent of our revenues, while the rest is contributed by non-food items. We would like to take this to 60:40 over a period of time”.

>bindu.menon@thehindu.co.in

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