Supermarkets in Turkey
Food retailing covers %62 of retail sales in Turkey, reaching approximately 140 billion dollars each year. Moreover, it continues to grow at a constant rate of %8. Wide-ranging urbanization and changes in Turkish lifestyles are redesigning the Turkish grocery market. As Turkey approaches the retail models in the west, the market is now dominated by big players.
Hypermarket/Supermarkets: A Growing Market in Turkey
The proliferation of small local markets and grocery stores, with approximately 90,000 such formations scattered across Turkey, reflects the historical landscape of food retailing in the country. These establishments, often family-run and operating independently of larger controlling companies, have been a traditional avenue for selling essential items in local communities. As the hypermarket model gains traction in Turkey, transforming the retail landscape, it also intersects with the dynamics of Turkish real estate. The expansion of hypermarkets may influence the local real estate market, impacting property values and the spatial distribution of retail establishments, contributing to the ongoing evolution of Turkey's retail and real estate sectors.
Yet supermarkets, and especially discount stores, are gaining more and more retail space across Turkey. Chains such as BİM, A101, and Migros opened hundreds of new branches over the past year.
By the end of the next decade, Turks are expected to meet all their food needs from supermarkets or chain stores, as urbanization and the desire for affordability are among the most prominent factors in the market. As of 2016, the largest 141 Turkish supermarket chains have 24,671 salesrooms throughout the country.
Turkey's largest supermarkets
Let's look at the biggest supermarket chains in Turkey:
In terms of pure sales volume, BİM is well above even its biggest competitors. BİM is Turkey's leading discount retail chain with 6.7% of the total market share. In 2016, the brand's sales revenues reached $5.5 billion, exceeding its value by 15%. Intending to continue its dominance, BİM continues to reach far by opening stores both at home and abroad. As of the end of 2016, the chain has 6,167 stores. 5,623 of them are in Turkey, and the remaining 544 are in the Middle East and North Africa. BİM wants to grow even more in 2017. By the end of 2017, it aims to open 25 new stores in Turkey, 60 in Morocco, and 50 in Egypt. It also plans to move from being just a discount retail store to adopting the western supermarket model by incorporating delicatessen and non-food items. So far, 48 of its stores in Turkey have been reorganized in this way.
BİM supplies its food from Turkish food importers.
Migros has many retail formats with its wide product portfolio. While Migros deals with the discount side of businesses, Macrocenter deals with hyper/supermarket stores and Migros Jet deals with express markets. Migros is also active in Kazakhstan and Macedonia under the name of Ramstore. The company has achieved impressive growth in its retail sales rate in the past year. Migros' sales exceeded 3 billion dollars in 2016 which was 15% more than in 2015. It has 1,605 stores in total; 232 of these were opened in 2016. Most of the stores are in Turkey, and only 39 of them are located outside of Turkey. After acquiring 95% of the British retailer's Kipa hypermarket chain in March 2017, its market share is expected to increase during the year. While the chain imports its foods, also works with other importers for niche or luxury products.
Yıldız Holding has a comprehensive business portfolio which of them is Şok. It operates 162 extensive hypermarkets in Turkey under the name of Bizim Toptan. The company also operates 3,766 Şok stores. Yıldız Holding's grocery business brought sales of $1.8 billion to the company in 2016. Amounting to 771 million dollars of this total, showed that the hypermarket format in Turkey is gradually developing despite having fewer stores throughout the country. In general, Yıldız Holding does not directly import the products it will sell; instead, it supplies through importers and wholesalers.
A101 owns the country's largest market real estate with 6,273 stores across Turkey. The company has had annual sales of $1.1 billion since 2014. A101 fills its shelves through importers and wholesalers.
CarrefourSA stands out in this list as it is a Turkish-French joint venture. French retail giant Carrefour Group owns approximately 48% of the company, while Turkish conglomerate Sabancı holds the majority.
The company operates stores in many formats across Turkey, including hypermarkets, express markets, and local grocery stores, as well as stores for more expensive and gourmet items. There are 691 stores under the name of Carrefour all over Turkey.
File, which is one of the increasingly preferred and growing market chains in Turkey, especially for the last 5 years, is a different new model that BİM markets offer to their customers in 2015. File Market is a type of market that focuses on selling its products as a concept. The products in this market are based on quality. It tries to sell better quality and more affordable products than the products in other chain stores.
All these markets have started to develop their own applications and provide services over the internet with the pandemic epidemic that swept the whole world.