Wingarage

History

2024

Opening stores

Lenta has launched the Wingarazh chain of alcohol stores: the first five outlets are open in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. The press service of the retailer announced this on April 25, 2024.

About 1600-1700 items of goods are presented in new stores. Among them are Fresh and Ultra Fresh food (dairy, poultry, meat and meat gastronomy, fish, bread, vegetables and fruits), as well as a wide range of alcoholic beverages, including wines of exclusive brands.

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As explained in "Lenta," the stores "Wingarazh" are in the closest locations to the buyer. The area of ​ ​ trading floors ranges from 90 to 110 square meters. m. By the end of the first half of 2024, it is planned to open 10 more Wingarazh stores in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.

We continue to experiment with different formats to close the maximum number of needs of our customers. Our new format is a compact store located in close proximity to the customer. Its advantages will be a carefully selected range of food products, exclusive offers in the wine category and consistently low prices, - commented the general director of Lenta Vladimir Sorokin.

The general director of Infoline-Analytics, Mikhail Burmistrov, in a conversation with Kommersant, called the interest of retailers in the development of certain formats of alcohol stores logical, as large chains become prominent importers of alcohol and develop their own and exclusive brands in this segment, reducing dependence on distributors and increasing the efficiency of assortment management in the category. The newspaper notes that in 2023, federal chains were among the five importers of wine and strong alcohol.^[1]

Creating a Company

In mid-February 2024, it became known about the creation by Lenta of its own network of alcoholic beverages stores called Wingarage. For this project, the company registers the rights to the Wingarage brand and began searching for employees for development on HeadHunter.

According to Kommersant, Lenta decided to open stores with a strong wine assortment, similar to the objects of the Vinlab network. Initially, the retailer was going to enter the alcohol market segment by buying one of the current players. According to the interlocutor of the newspaper in the retail market, the company discussed the purchase of the Gradus network (by February 2024 it includes more than 390 stores in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other regions), but could not agree on the price of the transaction.

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Pexels

According to Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline-Analytics, diamond markets traditionally have higher assortment requirements, but do not achieve sufficiently high traffic rates. At the same time, the format remains attractive due to its high margin. The largest grocery retailers already had their own projects in the segment of alcomarkets, but in the end they were frozen. According to Olga Sumishevskaya, partner of One Story, the reason for the failure was in an assortment almost completely identical to ordinary stores of retail chains.

At the same time, the format of alcohol markets remains attractive for retailers due to the low costs of equipping such stores and their high margins, explained Alexander Stavtsev, head of the WineRetail information center. Chains of alcomarkets "Red & White" and "Bristol" demonstrate record growth rates in the number of outlets, he added. Sumishevskaya also predicts that the new Lenta alcohol markets will not become a classic option: in their assortment, in addition to a high share of alcoholic beverages, there will be snacks or fresh food products.^[2]

Notes