A RIVAL to Walmart with more than 80 grocery stores in the US will close another spot in just days.
The supermarket has plans to consolidate and remodel its existing stores instead, but this will mean some shoppers are left out to dry.
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Lowes Foods, the North Carolina-based grocery store is set to close another location very soon.
The company has more than 80 locations in total across North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
But in the last few years, Lowes Foods’ decision to concentrate on investing in new locations and improving existing ones has seen a few spots in close proximity vanish completely.
It has left Lowes Foods customers with fewer and fewer places to go nearby.
Before its latest announced closure, spots in Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina were shut.
The new spot set to close is located in Cary, North Carolina in the Preston Corners shopping center.
After it goes, there will be two other Lowes Foods left in the town.
These can be found on 6430 Tryon Road and 687 Mills Park Drive, per The News & Observer.
The nearby town of Apex also has a Lowes Foods, so shoppers still have places to go in the surrounding areas.
Lowes Foods has said that this is part of its “broader growth strategy to invest in new stores and remodel existing stores.”
Kelly Davis, a senior director of guest engagement for Lowes Foods, confirmed that the company decided not to renew its Cary lease.
Shoppers do not have long left until the Lowes Foods location closes for good.
The spot is set to close on Wednesday, May 14.
LOWES FOODS’ COMPETITION
It is worth noting that Cary has a lot of retail competition, with big names like Aldi, Lidl and Trader Joe’s operating in the town, too.
But it has not been confirmed that the high level of competition has anything to do with the Cary closure.
A recent report showed that in Raleigh, a city that lost its Lowes Foods last year, the company had a 4% market share in 2024.
US braces for ‘45,000 store closures’
Some 45,000 bricks-and-mortar stores could close in the next five years, experts have warned.
Several major retailers have announced store closures or gone out of business altogether in recent years.
In 2023, chains such as Foot Locker announced plans to close up to 400 outlets by 2026.
While, other well-known retailers like Tuesday Morning and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams filed for bankruptcy in 2023.
Bed Bath & Beyond has closed all of its brick-and-mortar stores and is now an online-only retailer.
The most affected retailers have been clothing, consumer electronics, sporting goods, hobby, book, music, and home furnishing stores since the start of 2019.
UBS has predicted the total number of retail stores will drop by 45k from 958k to 913k.
Despite that, the report says that certain stores should thrive while others decline.
It said retailers such as Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, and Target, could be among the winners.
Raleigh’s statistical area includes Wake, Franklin and Johnston counties.
Lowes Foods also had a 1.8% market share in the Durham-Chapel Hill core-based statistical area, which includes Durham, Orange, Chatham and Person counties.
For context, Walmart had a more than 20% market share in both core-based statistical areas last year.
So while competition in Lowes Foods’ markets have not been cited as the reason for the closure in Cary, data shows that Lowes Foods has struggled to keep pace with bigger names in the past.
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