LOCAL discount grocery chain DALI has announced plans to expand its presence in Luzon, aiming to have up to 950 stores by the end of the year.
“We’re only going to stay in Luzon for now…, (and) we’re probably going to hit about 900 (to) 950 stores by the end of this year,” Anja Grote Westrick, director of strategic supply chain and ESG officer at DALI operator Hard Discount Philippines, Inc., told reporters on Tuesday.
Dali is a discount grocery chain that currently has over 250 branches in the Philippines, providing competitive pricing in local neighborhoods.
“The whole discount principle is you have a limited assortment, but the products that you have in your assortment are selling at high volume,” Ms. Westrick said.
DALI also targets to open in June its sixth distribution center in Naic, Cavite, a town about 50 kilometers south of Manila.
“On every store, there’s a certain limit in terms of sales, so you need to expand in terms of stores as much as possible so that you generate volume,” Ms. Westrick said.
“When you go out to the countryside, it’s not that much… so there, people are more used to taking a tricycle to the store. And there, you can spread out the stores a little bit more,” she added.
When asked about the provinces where the new DALI branches will be set up this year, Ms. Westrick said that they would be established “everywhere where we are now… it’s just picking the spots in between.”
The majority (around 60-70%) of DALI’s products are locally manufactured, while several others are imported from Malaysia, China, and Europe.
In March, Singapore-based growth equity firm Venturi Partners announced a $25-million investment for the expansion of DALI.
This marked the company’s second investment in the Philippines, following its investment in the grab-and-go coffee chain Pickup Coffee the previous year. — Beatriz Marie D. Cruz
