New Wellington Street location signals shift to smaller stores for LCBO
By Vito Pilieci, OTTAWA CITIZEN March 4, 2014 7:21 PM
OTTAWA — The LCBO is following the lead of other major retailers and moving toward opening smaller “boutique-like” shops that cater to densely populated urban areas.
The retailer will open the latest of its smaller-format stores on Wellington Street near Irving Avenue, bringing its total store count in the nation’s capital up to 35.
The store will be about 5,700 square feet, less than half the size of most of the LCBO’s newer store layouts, offering access to a total of 1,200 different products.
In recent years, the LCBO has been moving to massive stores with more product selection in a bid to satisfy customers and upgrade its image. Some of the new LCBO stores, which incorporate the Vintages brand that carries exclusive hard-to-find spirits, have been as big as 26,000 square feet.
The shift to a smaller store front has happened more recently as an aging population becomes less mobile and more people are choosing to live in highly populated urban areas.
“This isn’t just happening in liquor stores, but also in grocery stores and drug stores,” said Ken Wong, a professor of marketing in the school of business at Queen’s University. “This is in answer to the pattern of where people are moving. It’s also a recognition that parking is not always critical and that often times you don’t need the full assortment to satisfy people’s everyday needs.”
As the baby-boom generation becomes less mobile, offering services closer to home is becoming top priority for many retailers. Also, offering services that don’t require a shopper to drive and find parking is something that’s becoming more of a priority for many.
Wong said that major retailers such as London Drugs, Loblaws, Luongos and even Home Hardware are experimenting with smaller-format stores in densely populated urban centres to serve the increasing number of people that are choosing to live downtown.
His observations were supported by Barry Nabatian, director of market research for Ottawa’s Shore-Tanner & Associates, who said even Best Buy, Walmart and Future Shop have recently announced moves toward smaller stores in downtown areas in a bid to reach more customers. Nabatian said the LCBO has tried these small-format stores in Toronto already and have found that they have been well received by residents.
“It’s coming to Ottawa a bit later than other places. The main reason is that in downtowns and urban areas, there is more employment and increasingly more people living,” Nabatian said. “This provides additional (retail) opportunities.”
Nabatian said that while the smaller stores would cannibalize some of the sales from larger retail locations, it won’t do much to put the breaks on plans for more large-scale development in the suburbs.
Already Tangier is busy building an American-style outlet mall with more than 80 shops in its 350,000 square feet of retail space near the Canadian Tire Centre. Tangier has already applied for Phase 2 of the project to build a hotel and several restaurants on the site. A 120,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops store mixed with other construction already announced for the area will bolster development in Kanata North. The Rideau Centre is preparing for a major expansion and Bayshore Shopping Centre is nearing completion on its own major expansion.
The new small format LCBO will open at 987 Wellington St. W. on Thursday.
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