Super Kmart (also known as Kmart Super Center) is a chain of hypermarkets owned by Kabushiki Gaisha ABS.
Concept[]
Super Kmarts carry everything a regular Kmart carries, but also have a full grocery section with meat and poultry, baked goods, a delicatessen, garden produce, and fresh seafood. Kmart Super Center stores range from 140,000 to 190,000 sq ft (13,000 to 18,000 m2).
Many of these Super Kmarts also have gas stations, pharmacies, banks, Chuck E. Cheese's fun centers, and a KCafe.
History[]
The first of these stores were opened in the 1990s under the Super Kmart brand, before becoming "Kmart Super Centers" at the turn of the millennium. Super Center stores can feature a garden center, a video rental store, a branch of a local bank, an arcade, a portrait studio, a Jackson Hewitt tax center, a pharmacy, and usually a deli cafe or Little Caesars Pizza station. Several also include Kmart Express gas stations, and most had an auto center. During the Sears era, most Kmart Super Centers were closed during the two rounds of closures in 2002 and 2003, and many more had their groceries taken out, converting them into regular Kmart locations. Some of the surviving Super Kmarts were those in regions without a strong Walmart presence, including Ohio and Michigan. A typical Super Center sold around $30 million of merchandise during one fiscal year.
In 2015, the final year that Sears owned Kmart, there were only six Super Kmart stores in operation. In the same year, some Super Kmarts were downgraded into regular Kmarts with a concept called K-Fresh. A Kmart with a K-Fresh featured an expanded pantry and a fresh food department. These types of fresh items were no longer prepared on-site and instead came to the store prepackaged. In addition, the deli, butcher and bakery operations were shut down.
Acquisition by Luke Sams and ABS[]
After Kmart's acquisition by Luke Sams Corporation and Kabushiki Gaisha ABS, the two companies have announced that they will open up newer Super Kmart stores, as well as converting the K-Fresh stores back into fully-fledged Super Kmart stores. They have also announced they will convert several Kmart and Big Kmart stores to Super Kmarts through means of expanding their existing buildings. ABS has also announced they will remodel older Super Kmart stores, including the ones in Mentor, Ohio and Warren, Ohio by refreshing the produce, fresh food, deli, butcher, fresh meat, and bakery departments, and remodeling the interior and exterior of the stores, as well as replacing the Super Kmart logo from 1991 with the new Super Kmart logo.
Some subdivisions of the Supercenters were rebranded to align them with other brands run by the new owners. Some Little Caesars pizza stations in Super Centers were converted into Chuck E. Cheese's family entertainment centers.
The first Little Caesars Pizza Station to be converted into a Chuck E. Cheese's location was inside a pre-existing Super Kmart in Michigan. A sizeable expansion of the Super Kmart building was seen as the container for the new location, complete with a new front entrance and full CEC signage on the front of the expansion. The location was officially declared as "open" by CEC-ABS Entertainment on the 27th of September 2016.
ABS acquired Kmart outright on April 30, 2017. This includes Super Kmart.