cometcomma
Banned
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Walk into the 2,500-square-foot store, and the surroundings feel familiar. There's the multi-colored ICEE machine, hot dogs sizzling on a roller, and beer stacked in a walk-in refrigerator.
It's one of two convenience stores Wal-Mart opened last month. The other is in Rogers, Ark., near Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters. Both stores are in the parking lots of Wal-Mart Supercenters. Wal-Mart continues to test small store formats even though it abandoned its 12,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Express stores last year.
Crowley was picked for being located "on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, a very important market to us," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield. And because it's just off Interstate-35, a major north-south highway in the central U.S.
Wal-Mart's strategy seems to be not reinventing the convenience store concept but rather tweaking it.
The store's hot food section sells pizza, whole and by the slice, and on another bank of hot rollers are the "tornadoes," a knockoff of 7-Eleven's taquitos. Community coffee brand is sold from six taps, regular, decaf and flavored. There's a healthy selection with fruit cups, yogurt and "Market Side" branded salads and wraps, but no calorie counts on the labels.
Walk into the 2,500-square-foot store, and the surroundings feel familiar. There's the multi-colored ICEE machine, hot dogs sizzling on a roller, and beer stacked in a walk-in refrigerator.
It's one of two convenience stores Wal-Mart opened last month. The other is in Rogers, Ark., near Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters. Both stores are in the parking lots of Wal-Mart Supercenters. Wal-Mart continues to test small store formats even though it abandoned its 12,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Express stores last year.
Crowley was picked for being located "on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, a very important market to us," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield. And because it's just off Interstate-35, a major north-south highway in the central U.S.
Wal-Mart's strategy seems to be not reinventing the convenience store concept but rather tweaking it.
The store's hot food section sells pizza, whole and by the slice, and on another bank of hot rollers are the "tornadoes," a knockoff of 7-Eleven's taquitos. Community coffee brand is sold from six taps, regular, decaf and flavored. There's a healthy selection with fruit cups, yogurt and "Market Side" branded salads and wraps, but no calorie counts on the labels.
