So today in Vancouver, around the Grandview Hwy area, Walmart has opened up its doors here officially after years of trying it seems. It essentially took over the old location where a Costco wholesale business resided normally. For myself, this opening interests me a lot from a business perspective as I guess I will see first hand if this company can really affect an established business area.

What makes this unique too is that there is one supermarket called the “Real Canadian Superstore” which has been there for ages is no small potatoes by any means.

I did read some reports about the company’s financials during this recession time and apparently they were one of the companies that have still done well. Although, I was still surprised at how many people there were at this location. As you can see too, the line-ups were pretty long at the checkout area:

I guess the key thing is everyone wants things for cheaper to save as much money as possible during these times and this company has a reputation for that. While this isn’t a Vancouver specific thing, at least I don’t think, this is actually one of the only non Asian oriented supermarkets that I have seen that had a Chinese New Years display and selling a bunch of items related to he holiday.

It’s interesting to me as there is a heavy Asian population here in Vancouver and so I’m sure things like that may attract customers to them. While I don’t mean to imply anything by this either, I noticed that a lot of the employees were middle aged people working in entry level type of positions which is kind of odd as you would usually expect to see a lot of younger people working at retail stores( ie, quick jobs for people going to school) with the older people being in a management position.

The prices weren’t rock bottom or anything though, but I think the brand of the store will draw tons of people there. At the same time, I’m sure this will add extreme competition pressure which in turn can make prices fall for the consumers. Let’s see how this company impacts the local economy here.

I saw this brief segment on the news about saving money on your food bill which was kind of interesting. They mentioned this point about the flyers in particular where most of the time the items on the front page are where the real sales are at. Other items within the flyers are mostly just product listings of regular priced items. Come to think of it, I always had that mentality when it came to say electronic stores but never for food and grocery flyers for some reason.

It made sense too as they mentioned many times the items that are further into the flyer could be a paid product placement/advertisement from the manufacturer. They also talked about how items at the end of the aisles are usually there to get you to buy it impulsively as oppose to being on some kind of sale price. That was a common one that I knew before.

While I did realize this one before too, they talked about how in the supermarket you pay a lot more for convenience. The example they gave was a pretty good too of a watermelon costing about 99 cent a pound compared to another one that had been previously cut already costing $2.99 a pound. Was quite a comparison difference and was some good tips to save money on your food bill.