Walmart has an extremely interesting story, it also has very humble beginnings. They started off as a single retail store in Arkansas that surprisingly didn't even sell groceries. It grew from being a single store in 1962 to the largest food retailer in the US by 2010 with an estimated $188.3 billion in total food/consumable sales. In 1987 Wal-Mart opened what they called a hypermart store, which combined both groceries and merchandise, sales equaled approx five times that of just grocery stores. There were originally complaints about the hypermarts not carrying a good enough selection of groceries, so in response in 1988 Wal-Mart opened its first five Wal-Mart Supercenters that carried a fully stocked grocery side as well as merchandise and other services. Under the direction of David Glass Wal-Mart opened hundreds of these Supercenters during the 1990’s. Under his leadership…show more content… Wal-Mart also played it smart by catering to smaller towns that couldn't support a supercenter by rolling out the Wal-Mart Neighborhood markets. By 2002 there were 31 neighborhood markets that helped profitability with their grocery sales. In 1993 Wal-mart came out with their own brand Great Value, this brand has grown to be the largest food brand in the US in both sales and volume. During the last recession while most business were failing or performing poorly, Wal-Mart was actually thriving.
Because of it’s low cost it appealed very strongly during economic hard times. Wal-Mart is now heads above all other food retailers, as of 2010 it had $188.3 billion in sales with its 3,599 stores, with Kroger in second with $76.2 billion. Wal-Mart has opened 94 stores since 2009, while its two closest competitors Kroger, and safeway have closed 25. According to Mark Thoma a journalist for cbs, what’s best for Wal-Mart isn’t always what's best for