Last Friday, April 22, the Casino group disclosed its turnover for the 1st quarter of the year 2022. In addition to a turnover up by + 4.7% compared to Q1 of the previous year, the detail of the The results of the Saint-Etienne retailer confirm the driving role played by convenience formats in this renewed growth.
In January 2022, Jean-Charles Naouri, CEO of the Casino group, gave a long interview to the newspaper Les Echos in which he described local formats as “a buoyant and complementary segment of e-commerce”, a formula which finds a certain echo in the distributor’s results for the first quarter of 2022 in France.
Growth in the first quarter of 2022 driven by proximity
On a like-for-like basis, convenience represents the second segment (behind e-commerce and its 21% growth) for the French retailer, which experienced the strongest growth between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022 (+3.7%). In terms of total turnover, this increase is even more marked, with growth of 5.8% between the two periods.
This favorable dynamic in France should be highlighted, in particular in the sharp decline of hypermarkets, which had their heyday in the 1980s. According to statements by Jean-Charles Naouri to Les Echos, it is format “which will suffer the most from the growth of food e-commerce”. Conversely, convenience formats benefit from synergy and complementarity with food e-commerce. This last format is indeed on the rise with growth of 21% in Q1 2022 despite a French market down 5%. The Casino group therefore seems to be benefiting from the virtuous dynamic that is being established between food e-commerce and local formats, and the distributor intends to deepen this area of development.
A long-term positioning for the group headed by Jean-Charles Naouri
The progressive repositioning of the Casino group on the most promising formats, whose proximity is the result of a long-term vision, fueled by the observation mentioned above on the slow agony of hypermarkets in France. The Saint-Etienne group thus carried out “a redefinition of the format mix” towards proximity, a strategic axis whose implementation was accelerated by the health crisis which hit the country from March 2020. In January, Jean-Charles Naouri specified that the group intended to “open even more convenience stores in 2022”. This quantitative aspect of expansion into convenience is accompanied by a qualitative dimension: convenience formats are no longer the prerogative of urban centers (Franprix), and are also increasingly present in rural areas (SPAR, Vival, Sherpa). The Casino group is also betting on premium proximity with Monoprix and Casino Supermarché, as well as on organic products with the Naturalia brand. The success of convenience formats therefore appears to be a long-term trend recognized by most distributors, in particular because of the synergy that operates with food e-commerce, which also seems to be a long-term one.
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