High quality, top service and competitive prices. They are the keys to Rimi Baltic’s supermarket upgrade.
While the financial crisis has certainly placed a great strain on the Baltic states – and therefore slowed Rimi Baltic’s new store openings, it by no means brought Rimi’s development to a standstill. In fact, a long-awaited modernization program was set in motion in December 2009. That was when the pilot store for the new Rimi Supermarket opened in Adazi, Latvia.
A week later, another pilot store opened, this time a renovated Rimi Supermarket in the Minska shopping center in Riga. The modernization of the supermarkets will help to distinguish them through a greater emphasis on high quality, top service and competitive prices. In the process, they will become more energy efficient, including by installing locks, doors and curtains on refrigerator and freezer cases.
The supermarket format was launched in the Baltic region in 1997, but many of the stores themselves are holdovers from the “Soviet days”. A number of them were therefore in need of a facelift. Customers apparently thought so too, judging by their positive responses and the increased traffic. In 2010, Rimi Baltic expects to update another eight stores. In total, around 30 stores will be modernized.