Carrefour Throws in the Towel to Cash-and-Carry in Brazil; Atacadão, Assaí and Grupo Mateus Expand

Headquarters relocation, shrinking logistics footprint, and the rise of Atacadão expose the crisis facing traditional hypermarkets amid the rapid growth of the wholesale & retail model.

Pablo Lorenzo, CEO of Grupo Carrefour Brasil

By: SiiLA News

05/12/2026

Supermarkets are undergoing a profound transformation — not only in how they sell, but also in who they compete against. Today, the biggest battle in Brazil’s food retail sector is between traditional supermarkets and wholesale & retail chains, a fight in which Carrefour has, in many ways, already admitted defeat.

In 2023, the company inaugurated its main headquarters in Brazil, known as Campus Carrefour. Since then, new market challenges have emerged, including the rapid popularization of the wholesale & retail format — a segment the French retailer was already involved in through Atacadão.

By the end of 2025, less than three years after opening Campus Carrefour, the company announced it would relocate its headquarters. Carrefour will now move its operations to the Vila Maria district, alongside Atacadão’s operations.

“The relocation of the Campus headquarters, from Tamboré to offices in Tatuapé and Vila Maria, is part of the process of integrating and strengthening the Grupo Carrefour Brasil ecosystem, bringing Atacadão, Carrefour and Sam’s Club teams even closer together and promoting greater synergy, collaboration, and efficiency between corporate and business areas. The decision also takes employee well-being and urban mobility into consideration,” the company said in a statement to REsource.

Data from SiiLA’s Market Analytics indicates that the change is not happening only at the administrative level, but operationally as well. Over the past 12 months (Q1 2025 to Q1 2026), Carrefour’s occupied space shrank by 26,500 square meters in industrial properties alone, excluding standalone assets.

Looking at a broader timeframe, over the last five years (Q1 2021 to Q1 2026), the French retailer lost 59,200 square meters of occupied area. Meanwhile, its cash-and-carry counterpart expanded by 10,400 square meters. Although not an aggressive increase, it still outperformed the company’s traditional supermarket operations.

Wholesale & Retail Taking Over Traditional Supermarkets

The growth of the wholesale & retail format has become the main engine of Brazil’s food retail industry in recent years. Carrefour itself accelerated this movement by prioritizing Atacadão and reducing its exposure to the traditional hypermarket model. In 2023, the company announced the conversion of around 40 hypermarkets into Atacadão and Sam’s Club units between 2024 and 2026.

Assaí is perhaps the clearest example of this transformation. In 2024, the retailer completed its project to convert 66 hypermarkets and reached the milestone of 300 stores nationwide, consolidating one of the largest expansion cycles in Brazil’s food retail sector.

Data from SiiLA’s Market Analytics shows that Assaí expanded by 111,500 square meters in leased industrial properties space across Brazil since 2021.

Grupo Mateus also reinforces this trend. The company has been aggressively expanding its presence in Brazil’s Northeast region, primarily through the wholesale & retail format. In 2025, the group opened dozens of new stores and surpassed the mark of 300 operational units, with Mix Mateus remaining one of its main growth drivers. Within the industrial properties market, the group expanded by 74,000 square meters.

Meanwhile, hypermarkets have steadily lost relevance in food retail. The model has struggled with high operating costs, oversized sales areas, and changes in consumer behavior, as shoppers migrated toward more price-efficient formats such as wholesale & retail stores and proximity retail. Carrefour itself has been closing and converting traditional stores across several regions of Brazil.

Other cases also demonstrate the crisis facing traditional food retail formats. Extra, which shut down its hypermarket operations, sold its stores to Assaí between 2021 and 2022.

Spanish retailer Dia has also faced difficulties in recent years, including debts exceeding R$1 billion, store closures, and judicial recovery proceedings. The company is currently focused on smaller-scale operations.

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