Latin America's most profitable supermarkets

How a French grocer and a Coke bottler became top regional employers.

Who is the largest private employer in Brazil?

You might suspect meatpacking giant JBS, or maybe national champion Embraer. But you’d be wrong—for years now, the answer has actually been Grupo Carrefour Brasil, the local subsidiary of the French multinational grocery store chain of the same name.

Including everyone inside the wholly-owned Atacadão wholesale network, Carrefour counts over 150K employees nationwide. Marcel Fournier, its founder, gambled everything on Carrefour’s first hypermarket, famously declaring before opening day, “Tomorrow, either I’m rich or I’m ruined.”

Now, Carrefour may sign a lot of paychecks, but further north it’s outpaced by a different type of retailer. FEMSA, the world's largest bottler of Coca-Cola, is also Mexico’s top private employer. Last year, it counted over $40B in sales, while across its factories and OXXO locations it counted over 350K employees.

Today, OXXO operates at hyper speed, opening 4+ new stores per day in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru last year. In terms of sales, FEMSA is second only to another Latin American retailer.

We dove a bit deeper into OXXO (including its impressive fintech arm) last year for the curious.

Why is Walmart so dominant in the region’s retail market?

With an operational efficiency unmatched by basically any retailer not named after a rainforest, Walmart – specifically, the Mexican and Central American division colloquially called Walmex – is the undisputed heavyweight in the supermarket space of Latin America. Its brand recognition and supply chain management have helped it maximize its return on assets (ROA) in a way most companies can only dream of.

Roughly a fifth of all Walmart locations globally are in Mexico, which is particularly impressive given the company is officially the world’s largest private employer. Walmex owns and operates discount store options such as Sam’s Club and Bodega Aurrerá, with total retail locations across Mexico and Central America numbering over 4K and climbing.

While Walmex still faces challenges, such as a credit downgrade this week and CEO turmoil, the company is better-equipped than most to face these challenges owing to its healthy cash flow, customer loyalty, and inventory management.