Wal-Mart Offers ‘Grab It & Go’
by January 21, 2002 12:00 am 64 views
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unveiled some new ideas when it opened a new Neighborhood Market store in mid-January at 1819 S. Eighth St. in Rogers.
The store has a “Grab It & Go” box for customers on the run. Coffee, soft drinks, pastries and newspapers are sold at the front of the store. If customers are in a hurry, they can grab what they need and drop the money in the collection box.
“It’s on the honor system,” said Susanne Decker, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart. “Like everything we do, we’ll try it and see what works, learn our lessons and go from there.
“It’s great for those customers who are on their way to work and want to come in and get back out the door as quickly as possible.”
At 39,000 SF, the new store is slightly smaller than the other 25 Neighborhood Markets Wal-Mart currently has open. Those are 40,000 SF in size.
Other firsts for the Rogers store include a health-and-nutrition section and a 30-minute photo processing service.
Decker said the new store is tailored to the neighborhood it serves in south Rogers. Whether future Neighborhood Markets will look like the Rogers store is yet to be seen, she said.
Wal-Mart came up with the Neighborhood Market concept in 1999 and used Arkansas as a test market. The world’s largest retailer had already saturated much of the country with 200,000-SF Supercenters and was expanding globally. The smaller stores are more convenient and can be located in urban areas where real estate is expensive.
Decker said Wal-Mart plans to have 31 Neighborhood Market stores open by the end of January. Six of those stores are in Arkansas.