The La Cocos local retail chain continues its expansion in Romania by opening a new store in Brasov, its fourth hypermarket in the country, through a transaction brokered by the Cushman & Wakefield Echinox real estate consultancy company. The new store will have an area of approximately 10,000 sq. m, being located in the Brintex-Brașov retail complex, in the Bartolomeu area.
The Brasov store is the first unit officially announced as part of La Cocos' expansion plan, which includes the opening of five more units in 2024 and 2025. La Cocos Supermarket is the first independent retailer in Romania which recorded sales of approximately 1 billion RON in 2023, generated by three units, two in Ploiesti and one in Bucharest.
BRINTEX Discount Shopping Center has recently gone a major remodeling after 18 years in the same location and includes 200 stores in full occupancy. The new La Cocos store will compliment Brintex and is expected to significantly increase the 5,000 daily visitors traffic. Both La Cocos and Brintex believe it's a perfect fit which will create a unique shopping experience of value and variety for Brasov County.
Dana Radoveneanu, Head of Retail Agency at Cushman & Wakefield Echinox: "The food retail market is extremely competitive considering the presence of major international networks, as well as local businesses which have managed to establish themselves as important players. La Cocos is one of the most successful local hypermarket brands, a success achieved through a carefully researched market positioning. The opening of the new unit in Brasov in a key location, with a long tradition, is the direct result of the very good collaboration with the owner of the Brintex shopping center and of the experience our retail team has accumulated over the years, which has allowed us to identify the best solution tailored to replicate the brand's success in this city."
La Cocos is a new concept in the Romanian market, a retail format which offers three price levels to its customers, depending on the purchased quantity. These stores operate on large areas, providing approximately 12,000 of the most well-known and best-selling products in the country.
The first store opened in 2014 in Ploiesti. After several years of continuous growth, the unit, which at that time had an area of 3,950 sq. m, recorded sales of €54.4 million in 2019. The expansion plan began in November 2020 by moving to Bucharest, where the second store opened in the Vitantis Shopping Center, having an area of approximately 11,400 sq. m. Moreover, the third unit was inaugurated in November 2023, also in Ploiesti, with a sales area of around 13,000 sq. m, being the largest store operated by an independent retail food chain in Romania.
The food retail was one of the most resilient segments on the market, recording growth rates above inflation during the 2019 - 2022 period despite the overall price surge and the erosion of purchasing power and consumption. Therefore, hypermarket/supermarket chains reported a cumulative turnover growth of 18.2% in 2022 (the latest year with available and published financial results), according to the Romania Retail Snapshot 2023 study conducted by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.
Cushman & Wakefield Echinox is a leading real estate company on the local market and the exclusive affiliate of Cushman & Wakefield in Romania, owned and operated independently, with a team of over 80 professionals and collaborators offering a full range of services to investors, developers, owners and tenants.
The company's retail department provides consultancy to developers and retailers and intermediates the leasing of commercial spaces both on the street and within major shopping centers in Bucharest and across the country.
Cushman & Wakefield Echinox's Retail Agency department facilitated 26 lease transactions totaling approximately 30,000 square meters in Bucharest and the main cities of the country in 2023, for clients such as Somproduct, Mobexpert, Noriel, Jimmy Key, or Wittchen.
