Prosuma, the Casino franchise holder in Côte d’Ivoire, has launched the first Casino Mandarine neighbourhood store in Abidjan, which will be open 24/7.
Prosuma has launched the first Casino Mandarine store in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. It is the first of four stores due to open through to August 2017. The new store is on the Boulevard de Marseille in Biétry, an upmarket residential neighbourhood. It has a retail space of 460m² and will act as the pilot store. The pilot store will also act as a training academy for staff. The next stores will be in Marcory, Cocody and at the Grand Carrefour de Koumassi (Koumassi intersection).
Casino launched the Mandarine concept in France in 2015 in a bid to revitalise its Franprix neighbourhood store format. The format offers a greater focus on fresh products: fruit and vegetables, baked goods, meat, cheese and charcuterie. Other features within the Mandarine concept include hot and cold snacks, freshly made juices, in-store café, wifi and add on services such as key cutting and money transfer. Mandarine is a major development for Casino: at the end of 2016, 60% of its Franprix stores in France had switched to the Mandarine concept. Abidjan is acting as a test bed in sub Saharan Africa to see if wealthy consumers warm to the format.
The Abidjan store will stock around 5,000 SKUs, although larger stores can stock more than 6,000 SKUs. Prosuma has funded the new Mandarine stores with an investment of CFA7bn ($12.5m).
