I don’t know what’s up with the one near me. I’ve turned around and walked straight back out again the past three visits - there were massive queues with only one person at the till.
Odd thing is the big Carrefour, only 1-2km away, does a pretty good job at keeping the lines moving quickly.
What does this mean to us consumers?
Probably
Or
Either way probably less of what I want from a supermarket.
Another big enterprise leaving for the promised shores of China?
Carrefour has already been in China for years. I used to buy my coffee from there in like…2012.
The meat section was still as gross as any other Chinese supermarket though (live seafood jumping/being dropped onto the floor, open freezers of loose meat, etc.) 
Is that a strategy? 
Guy
According to the article @Belgian_Pie linked, Carrefour has already mostly pulled out of China:
While it has expanded in Taiwan in recent years, Carrefour retreated from the highly competitive Chinese market in 2019 by selling 80% of its loss-making operations to electronics retailer Suning.com
And yeah, I’m also quite worried about what this could mean for grocery shopping here. What happens when all the Wellcomes and Jasons and Carrefour’s become … something else?
No more imported goods?
I have no idea what to expect. But so much of the groceries I buy these days is at Carrefour - heck, PXMart doesn’t even stock brands of soy milk or tofu that I particularly like. It’d be nice if Costco went back to stocking good blocks of cheddar or pepper jack, but that seems to be a thing of the past now.
The Taiwan market continues to befuddle me. I was in the Nanshan Breeze Super today and they’ve got a massive counter with imported blocks of different cheeses I’ve never heard of; shelf after shelf of imported canned fish stuff, which I guess is a bit of a luxury product in cuisines I know little about. Who the heck buys that here?!
I don’t think they are doing well. Tried to cater to upscale market but few are buying.
Some of the shelves are filled with things just to look full.
The neighborhood Carrefour close to me seems to always be out of everything. I went to buy cilantro, onion, and red chilies. They only had onion so I went to PX mart. I had to settle for basil.
It seems like the stores are sparse.
Maybe it was just to make it more attractive for a sale. Rumors of them wanting to get out have been ongoing for a while.
Localize!
Did you have a look at the prizes?
My neighborhood Carrefour that changed from Wellcome, 99NT$ for 2 green bell peppers.
The list of companies that came and went:
Geant
Tesco
Makro
Wellcome
Park & Shop
…
They all came to profit from Taiwan’s ‘International character’. But didn’t realize people didn’t really want it.
Taiwanese just travel to experience international characters.
My wife is insisting we buy a property soon. Each one we look at is an empty shell that you have to build out. I would assume from what I have seen that many people just don’t bother to install a kitchen. And really why would you when there are 100 places to buy food within 100 feet of the entrance.
Maybe this is driving the simplification of groceries lines in supermarkets here. Reduced choice is a cost saving.
There is a demand for cooking classes. Which I find funny.
Just call them ‘cooking’ classes. Cooking is done by the ‘chef’.
Maybe its time for Aldi and/or Lidl to step in?
(ducks head before the swinging arms suddenly appear).
They any good? I’ll miss Reflets de France and stuff. My appreciation of France has increased enormously because of Carrefour.
Both are German “No-name” brand supermarkets, no frills, pay extra to use a Credit Card etc, smaller than the big names because they only have 2-3 brands of each item as against the 10 or more that the big ones have, but you see them all over Germany, and other places in Europe. Aldi are also in Australia, China and the USA whilst Lidl have some presence in the USA.