DOHA: As part of their new strategy and expansion programme, the Lulu Hypermarket Group, region's biggest retailer has opened a state-of-the-art neighbourhood store tagged 'Lulu Xpress' at Qatar Foundation's Education City Community Housing located at Al Rayyan, yesterday.
This is the 81st outlet of the group and it will give a new shopping experience to the customers. Keeping abreast of the latest international trends in the retail industry, the group is all set to experiment neighbourhood stores to enable the customers make shopping locally.
Though it is small in size when compared to group's other hypermarkets and department stores in Qatar, it has all the amenities of comfort, convenience and pleasure of modern shopping for the up-market as well as medium class customers.
It is connected with a world class supply chain. The store is designed in two levels based on the green concept and emphasis has been given to make available all types of food of the world - organic, gourmet, gluten-free and fat-free - all at Lulu's highly affordable benchmark prices.
According to a Lulu spokesman, the group is aiming to provide world-class convenience and hassle-free shopping experience to its customers with access to hypermarket prices. It will offer a whole world of shopping convenience with popular brands of a wide variety of product lines under one roof.
The main focus will be the extensive supermarket section with fresh vegetables, fruits, butchery and delicatessen serving hot and ready-to-eat foods and special counters serving the best of bakes and cakes and an array of Arabic sweets and delicacies.
In keeping with its endeavour to provide the best quality products in the most hygiene way, the group has invested heavily in special areas including state-of-the-art storing facilities, and latest baking and cooking machines.
To cater to the needs of the different nationalities residing inside and outside the Education City Community Housing, dedicated sections stocked with specially imported products from all over the world are set up.
"This project is in fact very important for us as we have implemented several new initiatives here. This neighbourhood store is going to be one of the eco-friendly projects with many unique features to reduce the carbon footprint. The state-of-art logistics, refrigeration, LED lighting, cooling system and bio-degradable bags etc are all going to be a new experience to the customers," said Yusuffali M A, Managing Director of Lulu Hypermarket Group.
"Qatar is a very important market for us and we will be investing more into the booming retail sector of this great economy. The kind of support and patronage we have been receiving from both locals and expatriate community here had been tremendous and we look forward to providing them world class quality and service at our new store at Education City Community Housing", he added.
In addition, the neighbourhood store will also feature a number of other outlets including Coffee Shop, Beauty Salon, Pharmacy, Post Office, Bank, Clinic, Laundry, Doughnut Shop and Flower Shop etc. The layout has been strategically designed to enable easy navigation and access to product categories and faster shopping. The large car parking can accommodate over 200 vehicles.
"We have great confidence in the Qatari economy and are looking keenly at launching new projects to further strengthen our presence here", Yusuffali said.
© The Peninsula 2010
