Eataly: Reimagining the Grocery Store Case Study
Eataly is Italian supermarket which Oscar Farinetti opened in 2007 and that has immediately become enormously popular around the globe (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Italian food giant shows positive tendency of growth and its financial data are reliable enough to make a decision to invest in Eataly.
The first reason of why I would invest in Eataly is that the shop offers unique concept which makes Eataly stand out among other numerous food selling location around the world. The company has the concept of European open markets and it sells products from Italian traditional manufacturers (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Eataly is the place where people can experience different aspects of interaction with food; they can taste, try, and buy products in one place. The network of suppliers of Eataly is small artisan, but high-quality producers who share the value of good, clean, proper products (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Thus, Eataly is the promoter of the Slow Food movement, which is about local sourcing, ecologically sustainable food production, and traditional cuisine (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). The concept of good, clean, and proper food is extremely popular nowadays as people are tired of burgers and pizza, and they want to be healthy and slim. The good prove of this is the success of the alike supermarket in America - Whole Foods which had $13 billion of revenue in 2013 (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). This trend is attractive to me as well and I consider that it will be popular in nearest future as well and Eataly will prove to be one proud retailer of clean and good products.
Second reason of why I will invest in Eataly is that their financial information approves the huge success of the company. Being opened in 2007, just in 5 years the company reached the revenue of 137 billion euro and 600 000 square feet of space in its Italy-based operations (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Started as online shop, Eataly has gone globally in 2014 and opened operated stores in different places worldwide. Besides 10 locations in Italy, Eataly Company has 17 more stores all over the world: 13 supermarkets in Japan, 1 in Dubai, 1 in Istanbul, 1 in New York and 1 in Chicago (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). American operations have shown big success as well: in 2010 the company opened 50 000-square-foot store in New York and gained revenue of $75 million in 2014 (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). An identical 63 000-square-foot store started functioning in Chicago in 2013 and had revenue of $55-60 million in 2014 (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Eataly plans to have revenue in the amount of $600 million in its American operations by 2018 (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014).
Yet, experts characterize food retailing industry as low-margin and highly competitive and they have doubts whether Eataly shop’s success will last for a long time (Gupta, Addis, and Page, 2014). Some people compare fast success of Eataly …
