Lotte Mart resumes Indonesia expansion with a new outlet in Serpong

Lotte Mart‘s 50th store in Serpong, Indonesia [Source : Lotte Mart]

Lotte Mart on Thursday announced the opening of its 50th store in Serpong, Indonesia, resuming its network expansion in Indonesia for the first time in two years since the pandemic.

Serpong, with a population of 1.5 million, has a high proportion of people in their 20s and 30s, accounting for 34.1 percent of the total. The average income of residents in the suburb of Jakarta is 2.5 times the national average due to the large number of high-income professionals.

The new store is 4,500 square meters, with more than 80 percent of the total area allocated to food sections featuring Korean food such as seasoned fried chicken and tteokbokki popular among millennials and young consumers in Indonesia.

Lotte Mart’s own pizza brand, Cheese & Dough Indonesia, will also open at the Serpong branch. Chefs from its Indonesian operation visited Lotte Mart’s Food Innovation Center in Korea in May to learn the pizza recipes.

Lotte Mart said it will also strengthen its competitiveness in fresh food by transporting strawberries freshly harvested in Korea to Indonesia via air twice a week.

Lotte operates 36 out of 50 stores, including the Serpong store, in a wholesale format, considering the local retail structure where people purchase groceries from large stores in the city and then resell them to islands or remote villages.

Lotte Mart acquired 19 stores from Makro Indonesia owned by Dutch wholesaler SHV Holdings in 2008, becoming the first Korean retailer to enter the Indonesian retail market. Excluding the pandemic period, Lotte Mart sales have grown at an average of 10 percent per year in Indonesia.