In anticipation of what e-commerce will become in the future, in 2018, we entered into strategic partnerships with a number of digital giants including Tencent and Google. They are helping us to design the digital services of the future, which will simplify, enhance and personalise the customer experience, both in store and via e-commerce. Our efforts were rewarded with a 30% increase in e-commerce food sales in 2018, totalling €1.2 billion, which is in line with our target of €5 billion by 2022.
With sales areas increasing from 200 to 900m2, Proxi, Carrefour Bio, Carrefour Contact, Carrefour Express and Carrefour City are our day-to-day living brands. They are homely, modern, close to our customers with an offering that is adapted for the location, attractive pricing and long store opening hours.
The convenience store format is very successful with our customers. In 2018, we were able to open 470 (145 of which in France) of the 2,000 initially planned worldwide. We have raised our targets since then: 3,000 convenience stores are expected to open by 2022.
Carrefour supermarkets are present in cities and rural areas. With sales areas of between 1,000 and 3,500m2, the Carrefour Market brand offers a wide range of fresh and local products, as well as a range of non-food products adapted for their customer base.
The Carrefour hypermarket format is designed for major shopping trips: a mix of 20,000 to 80,000 products in a sales area ranging from 2,400 to 23,000m2.
On site, customers can get fresh products prepared every day by our artisans and practical services (banking and insurance, for example) at competitive prices. We are in the process of radically changing our stores to meet our customers’ new expectations: being able to do their shopping as quickly as possible and having a number of options when it comes to picking up their shopping. As a result, we expect to reduce our sales areas by 400,000m2 by 2022, and to cut our products by 15% by 2020, primarily in non-food categories. The sales areas freed up are given over to the expansion of the organic, fresh, local or bulk product offering.
Present in most of the countries in which we operate, the Cash & Carry format is taking off, particularly in Brazil under the Atacadao banner with the opening of 20 sales outlets in 2018, and in France under the Promocash banner.
The Cash & Carry format offers retailers, caterers and professionals a vast range of food and non-food products presented on pallets, by the unit or in multi-packs at wholesale prices.