In a parking lot on Main Street in Crowley, Texas, a nondescript town of 14,000, Wal-Mart is testing out what it hopes could be its next small thing — a genuine convenience store.
Walk into the 2,500-square-foot store, and the surroundings feel familiar. There's the multicolored ICEE machine, hot dogs sizzling on a roller, and beer stacked in a walk-in refrigerator.
The retailer abandoned its 12,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Express concept last year, but it continues to test small store formats.
"We're eager for feedback from customers. We want to know what's working," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield.
The store, along with a similar one in Rogers, Ark., near Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters, opened last month. Both stores are in the parking lots of Wal-Mart Supercenters.
Wal-Mart's strategy seems to be not reinventing the convenience store concept but rather tweaking it.
The store's hot food section sells pizza, whole and by the slice, and on another bank of hot rollers are the "tornadoes," a knockoff of 7-Eleven's taquitos. Community coffee brand is sold from six taps, regular, decaf and flavored. There's a healthy selection with fruit cups, yogurt and "Market Side" branded salads and wraps, but no calorie counts on the labels.
The rectangle-shaped building sits in front of a row of 16 gasoline pumps, all under cover.
