In the coming days a new super premium supermarket, Le Bô Marché, is launching in Morocco. The new store, which is opening in Casablanca, is part modelled on a Dean and Deluca style New York deli and part modelled on an old style Parisian grocery store. It features a room to dry age meat, a fresh pasta machine from Italy and a vintage cold cut meat slicer and has an in-store restaurant.
Its founders, Mehdi Hsissen and Smail Haddioui, hope to establish a chain of premium stores across Morocco with ambitious plans to a dozen stores over the next three years. A key point of difference for the new store is its service proposition. The founders talk about the expertise of their store staff and plan to launch both a home delivery and a click-and-collect service in the coming weeks.
Le Bô Marché follows hot on the heels of Carrefour Gourmet, the multinational retail giant’s premium store format. Carrefour announced its intention to launch the Gourmet format in Morocco in 2016 with a pilot store in Casablanca. The pilot store, which opened in late March 2017, was converted from an existing Label’Vie supermarket. Carrefour’s Gourmet store format typically has upwards of 2000m² of retail space, half of which is devoted to fresh food: meat, fish, vegetables, deli products and local specialties, as well as exotic produce such as baby carrots, finger limes and edible flowers. If successful, the format will be rolled out in Rabat and then into major cities in Morocco.
The growth of the super premium sector in Morocco is perhaps a coming of age for supermarket retail in Morocco, where per capita spend on grocery is still just $454 annually, according to Trendtype estimates. It is debatable how much consumer demand there is outside Casablanca and Rabat for super premium supermarkets at present.
Le Bô Marché represents the extent to which Morocco is leading innovation in supermarket retailing in North Africa. It is exciting in its own right, even if we are sceptical about how possible 12 stores in 3 years is. It looks as if Carrefour, particularly, is seeking not only to test demand for the super premium sector but also head off competitors Casino (Monoprix) and Auchan (Simply Market Gourmand). The new Gourmet store is the retailer’s fourth format in Morocco, after its Carrefour Market format (around 600m² retail space), Carrefour hypermarkets (up to 5000m²) and Atacadão large hypermarkets (up to 7,500 m²).
[Note: Le Bô Marché closed in early 2018].
