So if you live in rural southeastern USA, you probably know what I’m talking about. There will be a rural area with no shopping near by. As urban sprawl expands into these areas, certain stores will start to move in. Once a critical mass is reached they will get a Food Lion shopping center. It’s s strip mall kind of setup anchored on a Food Lion grocery store. There’s usually a Chinese restaurant, and few other stores.
Does Food Lion plan these? Is there a county planner somewhere who determines this? Does this similar situation happen in other areas with other grocery stores?
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If you hadn’t included it, I was going to say there’s usually a Chinese restaurant in them, lol
Can’t speak to food lion specifically, but I work sort of adjacent to the commercial real estate development world.
It’s very common where I live (different part of the US) for grocery stores to do this. They buy a chunk of vacant land much bigger than they need for their store. They build enough space for their store and then several others that they plan to lease out. They serve as the anchor tenant, which makes the space much more attractive to lease for others.
A small Chinese restaurant likely couldn’t survive in its own standalone building in a lot of these places, but you get synergy from clustering these businesses. The Chinese restaurant gets a lot more traffic than they would otherwise, and people are also then slightly more likely to shop at that grocery store — maybe they want to get groceries and takeout.
It’s the same reason why most bigger grocery stores will have a bank branch inside — both businesses get more traffic, and the owner of the building gets diversified revenue streams.
There’s a standard shopping center template that includes an “anchor” store to drive primary traffic, and then other stores to synergize — a restaurant or two, a clothing store, a hair salon, maybe a card shop or pet food store.
A developer builds it as an area build up, and then finds tenants. In your area it’s a Food Lion, in my area it might be a Safeway or a Ranch 99. But mixing a supermarket with other stores is a win for everyone, as people visit one store on the way to another.
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