DALI targets 950 stores by year-end

MANILA, Philippines — DALI Everyday Grocery plans to open at least 300 new branches in Luzon as it targets to expand its total stores to as much as 950 by the end of the year, a ranking executive said.

Anja Grote Westrick, director of Strategic Supply Chain and ESG officer of Hard Discount Philippines Inc., said DALI has now grown to around 630 stores in Luzon since 2020. DALI closed 2022 with at least 250 stores.

Hard Discount Philippines is the owner and operator of DALI Everyday Grocery in the country.

Westrick said that DALI’s expansion has been fueled by the growing demand from Filipinos since each store sells a limited number of items as part of its business concept.

Westrick said the more stores opened would allow DALI to generate volume of sales that would offset the low margins they have in every item they sold, thus, resulting in overall profit.  DALI sells around 400 products in every store.

“We are only going to stay in Luzon for right now. We are probably going to hit about 900 to 950 stores this year,” Westrick told reporters on the sidelines of a food security forum hosted by the Asian Development Bank recently.

Westrick said they are looking to open the new stores in areas where DALI is already located.

“It’s kind of picking the spots in between,” she added, noting that DALI has an expansion team focused on looking and researching for new sites.

Landlords can also voluntarily offer their spaces to DALI as long as they meet the retailer’s requirements such as having a ground floor store size between 180 and 300 square meters and they are close to a residential area.

DALI is also set to open its sixth distribution center in Naic, Cavite before the end of the first half.

Westrick said they open new stores in an area based on its population density.

This would explain why some DALI branches are quite close or adjacent to each other in a given locality. But in areas that are less dense, DALI stores are more spread out.

“It very much depends on the customer base and on the neighborhood’s surroundings. If we have walking distance customers and (the area) has high density then that is enough,” she said.

“Then you pick the next store that has a high density of customers as well. So, there might be some stores that are very close together but that is most of the time in very high density areas,” she added.

Westrick said they have been receiving “very positive” feedback from customers, describing it as having a “gonutt” moment.

Gonutt is the hazelnut spread being sold by DALI that went viral on social media for seemingly having similarities with a popular Italian brand of hazelnut spread.

Westrick disclosed that DALI does the product formulation and taps third-party suppliers to produce their products for them.

“You are inventing new products, you are branding the products, you are creating labels. This is our own brand,” she said.

“Our own private labels, they are trademarks. We register every private label and there is a trademark on our name that we come up with,” Westrick added.

Westrick disclosed that the majority of their suppliers are local companies, which she estimated is around 60 percent to 70 percent of DALI’s brands.

Hard Discount Philippines is a wholly owned subsidiary of HDPM Sin Pte. Ltd., a foreign company incorporated under the laws of Singapore.

Dali Discount AG is the ultimate parent of Hard Discount Philippines and HDPM Sin, which was founded in Switzerland in 2020 with geographic focus in Southeast Asia.

Two weeks ago, Singapore-based Venturi Partners Pte. Ltd. announced that it invested $25 million in DALI to fund the retailer’s expansion plans.