Vons Plans Stores Tailored for the Latino Community

When Vons Grocery Co. took a hard look at Southern California demographics more than a year ago, it concluded that what the area needs is more food stores with a Spanish accent.

So by late this year or early next, the El Monte-based company plans to open the first of several stores that will be geared to Latinos, who by 1990 will make up 40% of the area’s population, Chairman Roger E. Stangeland said Thursday.

So far, sites have been leased in Montebello, El Monte and Cudahy, and the company is “zeroing in on a location in Lynwood,” he said, adding that Vons is “budgeting for several (such) stores each year for as far into the future as we budget”--about five years.

(Negotiations with HRT Industries for two of its Zodys discount store locations, in El Monte and Boyle Heights, fell through after several months, Stangeland said.)

The stores, ranging from 50,000 to 80,000 square feet, will operate under a name other than Vons and will be managed by a separate organization. They will have many of the same products and departments as other Vons stores but will emphasize different brands, especially those familiar in Mexico, Stangeland said.

“There’s a very large and rapidly growing segment of the California population whose ancestry is Mexican,” he said. “It’s a good food-shopping population--relatively large families who eat at home rather than out (and spend) a higher proportion of their incomes on food.”

Before developing the concept, a Vons research team visited Fiesta Marts in Houston and Xtra Markets in Miami and traveled to Mexico. It also spent time at church bazaars and community functions in Latino areas of Los Angeles.

Managers of the new Latino stores will have to ground themselves in some basic differences, Stangeland noted. For example, lemons as we know them are rarely grown and sold in Mexico. If they are, they’re called limes. What we call a lime is known as a limon in Mexico.

Stangeland said the company is in the process of setting up a supply network to serve the stores.