If you have ever tried to elbow your way into the Sobey’s Urban Fresh store on Balliol Street just off of Yonge Street you know what a hot property it is. Now the penny has dropped with Loblaws that small (10,000 square foot) stores shoehorned into busy neighborhoods can be quite lucrative. That is apparently why the giant retailer has announced the trial run of Box by No Frills in downtown Calgary. It is a down-sized and slightly more with-it version of the larger No Frills seen around Toronto. The Business News Network quotes Loblaws CFO Sarah Davis as saying: “We are trying that as a pilot to see, ‘Is that something we would be able to infill in a lot of areas of Canada?’” Ms. Davis made the remark on a conference call on Wednesday morning as the company prepares to spin out a real estate investment trust. Box by No Frills will have to compete with the dominant Safeway chain out west and Loblaws may be hoping they can undercut that firm’s big box presence with smaller high-service “infill stores” like Sobey’s has done on Balliol. Loblaws chases Sobey’s with “Box by No Frills”
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If you have ever tried to elbow your way into the Sobey’s Urban Fresh store on Balliol Street just off of Yonge Street you know what a hot property it is. Now the penny has dropped with Loblaws that small (10,000 square foot) stores shoehorned into busy neighborhoods can be quite lucrative. That is apparently why the giant retailer has announced the trial run of Box by No Frills in downtown Calgary. It is a down-sized and slightly more with-it version of the larger No Frills seen around Toronto. The Business News Network quotes Loblaws CFO Sarah Davis as saying: “We are trying that as a pilot to see, ‘Is that something we would be able to infill in a lot of areas of Canada?’” Ms. Davis made the remark on a conference call on Wednesday morning as the company prepares to spin out a real estate investment trust. Box by No Frills will have to compete with the dominant Safeway chain out west and Loblaws may be hoping they can undercut that firm’s big box presence with smaller high-service “infill stores” like Sobey’s has done on Balliol. 