Rouses Supermarkets further expanded its rapidly-growing footprint in the Capital Region this week with the signing of a 20-year lease to take over the space currently occupied by Matherne’s in the Bluebonnet Village Shopping Center at 7580 Bluebonnet Blvd.
Matherne’s closed its store on Tuesday, the day Rouses CEO Donny Rouse announced the deal and outlined plans for a $3 million renovation of the 32,000-square-foot space.
“It’s a great location for our supermarket,” Rouse told Daily Report. “It’s an area that we’ve been wanting to get in and hadn’t been able to get a spot to build a store.”
As Business Report detailed in a cover story from earlier this year, Rouses suddenly became the largest grocery chain in the Capital Region last October, when it announced it had struck a deal to buy out all nine LeBlanc’s Food Stores location in the area.
Rapid growth isn’t exactly anything new for the 57-year-old business that’s headquartered in Thibodaux, at least not over the past decade. Ever since Rouses expanded beyond the Houma-Thibodaux area and into New Orleans in 2007, it has continued to push into major markets along the Gulf Coast—from Lafayette to Gulf Shores, Alabama—at a breakneck pace.
In the 10 years since, the company has grown from 16 stores in Louisiana to 54 across three states, with a workforce of more than 6,000 employees. Rouse says revenue has more than doubled during that time.
“Either you’re going to grow or competition is going to come in and you’re gonna lose your business,” Rouse told Business Report earlier this year. “You have to make a decision of what the future of the company is going to be, and we decided we wanted to grow.”
In December, Rouses announced plans to add another Baton Rouge store at Burbank and West Lee drives as the anchor tenant of a large development called Arlington Marketplace. The deal has yet to be finalized and the development is still in the planning phases. If it comes to fruition, it’s expected to be open late next year.
As for the former Matherne’s on Bluebonnet, it will remain closed throughout the remodel and is expected to reopen as a Rouses in the late summer.
—Steve Sanoski
