Gigante Near Deals for Two OC Stores; Eyeing Santa Ana
By CHRIS CZIBORR
Mexico’s Grupo Gigante SA de CV is near closing deals for two grocery stores in Orange County, according to the head of its Santa Ana-based U.S. unit.
The stores are slated for Ana-heim and Stan-ton, according to Justo Frias, president of Gigante USA Inc.
Last week, Frias said he was in talks with city officials to se-cure sites for the stores, which would mark Gi-gante’s first foray into OC.
The two cities offer sizable potential for Gigante, Mexico’s largest supermarket operator. Hispanics make up about 47% of Anaheim’s 328,000 people and account for 49% of Stanton’s 37,000 people, according to the latest Census figures.
Gigante has been working on getting sites in Anaheim and Santa Ana for about a year, after the company last year signed a wage pact with grocery workers at its stores in Arleta, Pico Rivera and Covina.
Frias said the company hasn’t yet found a site yet in its biggest potential market here: Santa Ana.
“Find me a suitable site and we’ll open a store there,” Frias said.
Within a year, Gigante plans to open two stores in South-Central Los Angeles, near Compton, which are under construction.
In April, Gigante broke ground on the first of the South-Central stores, which will anchor a rebuilt shopping center in a now largely Hispanic area where shops were decimated during the 1992 riots.
The company has spent about $6.5 million on the store’s construction, supplies and inventory, Frias said. It stands to be the first U.S. store Gigante has built from ground up, he said.
Last year, labor protests by the Washington, D.C.-based United Food and Commercial Workers stalled Gigante USA’s ambitious plans for OC and elsewhere in the U.S.
During the labor talks at Gigante’s three California stores, company officials told workers represented by the grocery union that it would not interfere with organizing and would pay higher wages for seasoned workers.
The pact covers all current and future Gigante stores in Southern California.
Gigante USA relies heavily on Lewisville, Texas-based wholesaler Fleming Cos., one of the biggest wholesale supermarket suppliers, to stock its stores.
For some items, Gigante USA buys from Commerce-based Unified Western Grocers Inc., according to Frias.
“We plan to stick with those two companies to get our day-to-day products, even for our future Orange County stores,” he said. “Unified and Fleming both cover OC and there is no big wholesaler in the county that serves our market.”
Gigante USA does buy some products from Mexican distributors, Frias said.
“But only when buying goods by the container load,” he said.
Frias, a native of San Sebastian in Spain, said he goes from OC, where he lives, to Mexico City a few times a month to meet with the Losado family, which owns Grupo Gigante.
Gigante, which is well known among those from Mexico, faces more established rivals in OC. Fullerton-based The La Rioja Ranch Market, which has stores in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton and Buena Park, stands to compete with future Gigante stores. So too will Santa Ana-based Northgate Market.
Other rivals for Gigante in OC are likely to include the Hispanic-owned Big Saver Foods in Santa Ana as well as Kroger Co.’s Food4Less.
Gigante opened its first of three U.S. stores in Pico Rivera in 1999. Its most recent store opened in 2000 in Covina. The company hopes to open more than 20 U.S. stores in a bid to attract the country’s growing Hispanic population.
Gigante USA has 400 Southern California employees, including 20 at its Santa Ana headquarters.
