Wal-Mart to close 9 stores in Kansas

Wal-Mart said Friday that it will close five smaller stores in the Wichita area as part of a plan to cut 269 stores worldwide.

The company, which has been under pressure from investors to improve sales and profits, is shutting down all of its small-format Express stores, tweaking the number of its other stores and building up its e-commerce firepower.

In the Wichita area, closings include Neighborhood Markets at 601 N. West St., 9831 E. Harry, and 4794 E. 13th St., in addition to Express stores in Rose Hill and Clearwater.

Elsewhere in Kansas, the company said it would close Wal-Mart Express stores in Burlington, Ellsworth, Hillsboro and Columbus.

All of the Kansas stores will close as of Jan. 28.

The store closures will mean the loss of 10,000 positions nationwide and 16,000 jobs internationally. The company said that employees being laid off will be given preference in hiring at nearby stores.

“It is a big deal,” Rose Hill Mayor Jason Jones said Friday. “We’ve got 30 employees. Most are local residents, both full- and part-time.”

Residents have multiple shopping options 10 minutes away in Derby and Andover, he said, but the closing will leave a hole in the town’s sales tax base. Rose Hill was set for a public hearing on a street project, and now, he said, they will have to think hard about going ahead.

Clearwater Mayor Burt Ussery said the departure of his town’s Walmart Express is both good and bad news.

The good part is that the town already had a grocery store, the locally owned Mize’s Thriftway. The departure of Wal-Mart will surely help that store’s financial future, he said.

But Ussery was upset about the loss of the town’s pharmacy. Wal-Mart, when it opened a year ago, bought the town’s lone pharmacy, and about 80 percent of the town residents used it. It’s 10 miles to 12 miles to pharmacies in Haysville, Wichita and Goddard.

“It’s pretty frustrating that somebody can come in on a trial run, flex their muscles and buy up the local pharmacy, and then just decide their model isn’t working and leave with two weeks notice,” he said.

And in the small town of Burlington, in eastern Kansas, Mayor Stan Luke said town has other stores that sell groceries and gasoline, which will benefit from less competition.

“There will a reduction in the sales tax, but otherwise it will have a minimal impact,” he said.

Even as Wal-Mart plans to close hundreds of locations, it also intends to open more than 300 stores this year, including 50 to 60 supercenters in the United States and 85 to 95 Neighborhood Markets.

Wal-Mart had been testing the Express concept since 2011 as a way to reach a different kind of shopper or a different kind of shopping trip. Wal-Mart Express stores were a mashup between a dollar store and a small grocery, offering convenience-oriented food products but not a wide array of fresh produce or meats.

The idea was that it could help Wal-Mart capture more of shoppers’ dollars on smaller “fill-in trips,” when a customer isn’t necessarily aiming to restock their pantry. And the store’s smaller footprint was also a way to allow Wal-Mart to shoulder into neighborhoods and towns where a supercenter wouldn’t fit.

CEO Doug McMillon said the closures are unrelated to the company’s decision last year to raise the minimum wages to $10 a hour.

He wrote in a blog posting on Walmart.com that the higher pay has resulted in improved customer service that has led to faster checkout, better in-stock across the stores, a clean shopping environment and friendly associates – and a payoff in higher comparable sales, customer traffic and customer satisfaction.

He wrote that the stores being closed were picked based on “a number of factors, including financial performance as well as strategic alignment with long-term plans.”

This story was originally published January 15, 2016 at 11:24 AM with the headline "Wal-Mart to close 9 stores in Kansas."