RIL to use stores selling meat for other formats

It has shut all its stores and those within its hypermarkets as some customers were offended with the company selling non-veg products

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail might convert its just-closed Reliance Delight stores, the chain selling non-vegetarian products, into outlets catering to some other formats.

“They have the properties and they will meaningfully use it and accommodate other formats,” said a top executive aware of the company’s plans. “The Delight stores are around 200 sq ft each and they are evaluating all options,” he said.

Reliance has around 100 Delight stores in the country. It has shut all its stores and those within its hypermarkets, as some customers were offended with the company for selling non-vegetarian products.

Reliance Retail runs its stores across five verticals — value, fashion & lifestyle, consumer durables, jewellery and brands. Reliance runs 1,500 stores across its formats and small stores include Reliance Fresh and the Vision Express optical chain.

Said a Reliance group source: “The management has taken a call to shut it and there is no question of selling it.”

Venky's, Real Good Chicken of Godrej Tyson Foods and Suguna Foods are some of the big players in the organised poultry market.

Industry executives and consultants Business Standard spoke to said the closure of the chain would not hit Reliance or the business as a whole.

G B Sundararajan, managing director, Suguna Foods, said: “The market size of organized non-veg retail is small and players may not scale up now. We were supplying to Reliance and we will supply to others now.”

Added Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors: “The category is not so big that it would impact Reliance Industries’ retail business.”

However, Harminder Sahni, managing director of Wazir Advisors, said unorganised players could gain from Reliance’s exit.