As ASDA opened its latest London store in Walthamstow town centre, it unveiled a £114m plan to deliver 12 new, refurbished or extended stores within the M25.
The 12-month programme will see two new stores in Crawley and Sutton with ASDA’s existing store in Park Royal re-sited, all at a total cost of £80m.
Stores in Wallington, Dagenham and Beckton will all receive ‘refits’ or be extended at a cost of £21.4m.
London will also get its first ASDA Wal-Mart Supercentre at Watford, with the £5m conversion of the existing store, due to open on 4 November 2002 - Britain’s ninth store to carry the Wal-Mart name alongside ASDA’s.
And stores in Wembley, Hatfield, Isle of Dogs, Clapham, and Colindale will go through a refresh at a total cost of £4m.
Walthamstow is the first and, at 17,500 sq ft, the smallest of the new London stores. But its size is not the only difference. The new £4m town centre store will focus solely on food. As well as the full weekly shop, it will offer a new range of hot and cold ‘Food to Go’ along with the widest range of ready meals aimed squarely at lunch, teatime and late night customers.
Walthamstow will have identical prices to the other 255 ASDA stores across the country. Research commissioned by ASDA last year illustrated that many customers shopping in competitor small store formats paid a price premium for doing so.
Tony DeNunzio, ASDA’s chief operating officer, said: "Walthamstow illustrates that we can flex formats and develop stores to meet the needs of every community. "Unlike other supermarkets, prices at ASDA are the same whether you’re shopping in Walton, Wakefield or Walthamstow."
