Rouses Markets looks to expand into BR area
Rouses Markets looks to expand into Baton Rouge area next year
Baton Rougeans visiting friends and relatives throughout the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast may have noticed the proliferation of Rouses Markets.
Lafayette, Mandeville, Covington, Slidell have gotten new Rouses Markets, while Baton Rouge is still virgin territory for the upstart Thibodaux-based independent grocer.
That could all change next year.
“Absolutely we are interested,” Managing Partner Donny Rouse said about the grocer entering the Baton Rouge market. “It’s a high priority for us, and we want to be in the entire Baton Rouge area.”
Rouse said the chain has been looking in Baton Rouge for about two years. However, 2012 will probably see Rouses remodeling about a half-dozen of its existing stores before the next round of expansion.
The key, Rouse said, is trying to find the right locations and hitting the market with a splash.
“We don’t want to come in with one store if we go,” he said. “It would be three stores at the same time.”
Rouse said he’d like to see one location along the Interstate 10 corridor within the city, with another in the Prairieville/Gonzales area and another possibly in Zachary.
“We’re not quite ready, but we’re working on it,” he said.
The process hasn’t been without its challenges.
“Real estate in Baton Rouge is very expensive,” he said. “It’s making it very difficult to find locations that we like and find them at the right price.”
Rouse said the chain owns its stores and doesn’t lease them because leasing raises costs and prices.
“That’s not the way we like to go to market,” he said.
In 2011, Rouses opened new stores in Lafayette, Lockport, New Orleans’ warehouse district and Diamond Head, Miss.
“We had four (new locations) this year, so we need to do some remodels now,” he said, noting the chain will open only a few new stores a year.
After expanding along the Gulf Coast, Rouse said, “we’re ready to start filling in the area, which would be Baton Rouge.”
True to its Thibodaux roots, Rouses supports local farmers and fishermen, something Rouse said separates it from national competitors.
Jonathan Walker, a broker with Maestri-Murrell Real Estate specializing in retail development, said Rouses should have little trouble setting itself apart from the national chains.
“I do think they are going to have more of a local draw, which is Rouses’ specialty,” he said, noting the chain has always succeeded in reflecting the communities it builds in and kept up with the trend toward grocery shopping as an experience, not a chore.
“I think that Rouses being a local grocer, it’s easier for them to evolve and adapt to the market around them,” he said. “”A corporate grocery store … it’s just so hard for them to change and evolve.”
He also said the lack of any big-name, national grocers — an H-E-B, Kroger or a Publix, for example — circling the local market will certainly help Rouses.
Rouses traces its roots to City Produce Co., founded by J.P. Rouse in Thibodaux in 1923, buying locally grown fruits and vegetables from farmers in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes and the French Market in New Orleans, according to the company.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Rouses had supermarkets in Houma, Thibodaux and Raceland, followed by Lockport, Cutoff and Morgan City.
In 1999, Rouses started opening stores dubbed “epicurean markets” that were significantly more upscale than its existing stores. After opening five of them — in Thibodaux, Houma, Mandeville, Slidell and Youngsville — the concept really became the defacto norm for new Rouses locations, Rouse said.
The key, Rouse said, is a store with the freshness that a customer can smell and see when he steps into the entrance.
In 2007, Rouses purchased the 18-store New Orleans division of Save-A-Center, the former A&P chain. A year later, it purchased Choice Supermarkets in the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Those acquisitions and the stores built from the ground up have helped make Rouses one of the largest independent grocery chains in the country, with 39 stores employing 5,200 workers. Its stores range from 5,000 to 90,000 square feet. Rouses even put a store in the French Quarter on Royal Street.