Lotte Mart opens 16th Vietnam store, first in 3 years, as it pushes deeper into Southeast Asia

Lotte Mart said Sunday it has opened a new store in Vietnam for the first time in three years, accelerating its expansion across Southeast Asia.

The retailer opened its Tay Ninh store on Thursday in the emerging economic city of Tay Ninh in southern Vietnam — its first new Vietnamese location since the West Lake Hanoi store roughly three years ago.

The opening marks a strategic shift, extending Lotte Mart's footprint beyond major urban centers such as Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi into smaller provincial cities. Tay Ninh lies about 90 kilometers northwest of Ho Chi Minh City and has grown into an emerging industrial and logistics hub. The area draws not only local residents and industrial workers but also tourists, thanks to nearby attractions including Ba Den Mountain and the Cao Dai Temple.

With the Tay Ninh opening, Lotte Mart now operates 16 stores in Vietnam. The company entered the Vietnamese market in 2008 with its Nam Saigon store in Ho Chi Minh City and currently runs 64 stores across Southeast Asia, including 48 in Indonesia.

"We are also preparing to open a Bac Giang store near Hanoi later this year," a Lotte Mart official said. "We plan to expand into small and mid-sized provincial cities near major urban centers — like Tay Ninh and Bac Giang — that have high growth potential."

The Tay Ninh store transplants Lotte Mart's Korean-style grocery format into the local market. About 88 percent of the store's floor space is devoted to food, making it a dedicated grocery outlet. At approximately 2,165 square meters, it is the smallest Lotte Mart in Vietnam, but the assortment has been streamlined around proven bestsellers and core categories.

The store brings together K-food, high-quality fresh produce and globally sourced products alongside a K-beauty zone and tenants linked to other Lotte Group affiliates. About 15 percent of the total product lineup consists of differentiated items unavailable at competing local supermarkets.

Mirroring its domestic stores, the Tay Ninh location leads with K-food through a dedicated prepared-foods corner called Yorihada Kitchen. More than 30 percent of the deli offerings are K-food items — kimbap, tteokbokki and dakgangjeong (crispy fried chicken) among them — alongside sushi and local dishes, totaling about 300 deli products. Sales at Yorihada Kitchen locations across Vietnam rose 20 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year.

The store also features a "K-Noodle Station" and a "K-Grocery Shop," both dedicated to popular Korean products including ramyun, offering roughly 1,500 K-food items in total. The in-store bakery operates under Lotte Mart's own brand, Pungmiso, showcasing Korean-style baked goods.

Fresh produce is positioned around quality and premium appeal. Built around the private-label line FRESH 365, the store has significantly expanded its direct-from-farm sourcing, raising the standard across all fresh categories — produce, seafood and meat. The FRESH 365 lineup covers more than 100 items, and the global food assortment runs to about 2,000 products.

The health and beauty section is designed as a K-beauty specialty zone. Sales in Lotte Mart Vietnam's health and beauty category grew 41.1 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, establishing it as a new growth driver. The store carries more than 400 products — from brands popular with the local MZ generation such as VT and TFIT to top-selling beauty lines from Daiso.

Reflecting South Korea's affordable cosmetics trend, the store has set up a fixed-price zone priced at 99,000 to 199,000 dong (about 5,000 to 10,000 won). Lotte Mart plans to add about 100 more value beauty products before the end of the year to sustain K-beauty's momentum.

The store also serves as a mixed-use lifestyle destination. Beyond Lotte Group affiliates Lotteria and Lotte Cinema, the tenant mix includes a clinic, a game center and a kids cafe, covering everyday needs under one roof. The combination of inter-affiliate collaboration and a tailored tenant lineup delivers a one-stop environment where customers can shop, enjoy cultural activities and spend leisure time.

Lotte Mart already has a proven track record with the grocery-specialist format. The West Lake Hanoi store, which opened in September 2023, posted sales growth of 20.4 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year. Its full-year 2025 sales rose 29.3 percent over 2024, and cumulative visitors since opening have surpassed 7 million. The Da Nang and Nha Trang stores, both converted to the grocery-specialist format in January, have recorded sales growth of more than 31 percent since their relaunch.

Buoyed by those results, the Vietnam subsidiary has posted growth every year since turning profitable in 2022. In 2025, it recorded annual sales of 426.6 billion won ($291 million) and operating profit of 40.5 billion won. In the first quarter of this year, sales reached 134.3 billion won, up 15.3 percent year on year, while operating profit rose 34.8 percent to 16.9 billion won.

Shin Ju-baek, head of Lotte Mart and Super's Vietnam subsidiary, said the Tay Ninh store represents "a compact hub model that concentrates the K-food and grocery capabilities Lotte Mart has built up in the Vietnamese retail market." He added that the company will "accelerate territorial expansion across Vietnam — including the Bac Giang store opening in the second half of this year — to establish ourselves as the No. 1 grocery market in Southeast Asia's retail sector."