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Mexico: Tiendas3B stores surpasses Walmart in stores and will invest even more

Discount Retail Chain Tiendas 3B Stores exceeded the number of branches Walmart in Mexico. Although the gap in sales between the two companies is still huge, the data is revealing and is an example of the dynamics that Mexican retail is going through.


The discount retail model created by Hatoum has been a success, its company in the Mexican retail sector seems to indicate that it does not intend to put its foot off the brakes in its expansion strategy. By 2026, The company plans to open between 590 and 630 new units, with an investment of 5.5 million pesos per store, which implies a capital expenditure of 3,465 million pesos.


At the end of 2025, Tiendas 3B ended up with 3,346 stores in Mexico, above Walmart's 3,316; however, OXXO it is still the king, and by far, with 24,297 stores throughout the country and opening rates of 1,000 stores per year, something that no other retailer can boast.


Tiendas 3B Secret

"We operate a high-growth business model that has proven to be solid and resilient throughout economic cycles," says K. Anthony Hatoum. The data seem to prove him right, in a year marked by the weakness of the Mexican consumer, the company's sales reached 78,153 million pesos, 36% more than in 2024.


But if we look at the map from further away, the company's progress looks more interesting. Its Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) since 2021 is 35.6% and since then their annual income has multiplied almost 3.4 times.


Growth is constant, however, the distance from Walmart in Mexico remains abysmal. The company headed by Cristian Barrientos Pozo reported net sales of 836,428 million pesos, 10.7 times more than 3B.


But what Hatoum has built is not just an expanding chain, but a way of reading the mood of the Mexican consumer. While Walmart of Mexico and Central America fine-tunes its omnichannel machinery, with 17.1% annual growth in GMV eCommerce, 1,468 stores with on-demand delivery capabilities and a 3.3% advance in same-unit sales in Mexico. Tiendas 3B insists on a more pedestrian and perhaps more powerful truth: for millions of homes, modernity does not come first because of the app, but because of the price.


Walmart had a ticket growth of 3.9% in 2025 and a traffic drop of 0.5% in Mexico; Tiendas 3B, on the other hand, reported a 23% increase in the number of transactions, to 825 million, and an average ticket of 94.9 pesos, 11% higher than the previous year. They are not just metrics: they are two different X-rays of consumption.


The battle of low prices

"Solid and resilient," those two words Hatoum has repeated countless times since his company hit Wall Street. Read calmly, it is a competitive declaration of war. Because what Stores 3B is testing not only the expandability of its rivals, but a more elementary idea: that, in a weak economy, where it is sometimes difficult to reach more than the fortnight, consumption becomes selective, proximity is not everything and the format of hard discount it can cease to be a niche to become a structure.


Mexican retail goes through many battles at once: omnichannel; technological evolution where data and AI will become more relevant; that of the square meter that is summarized in winning the best corners; and perhaps the most important: that of price.


Bodega Aurrera has been Walmart's workhorse for decades, so much so that it offers dozens of basic products that can be bought with the "morralla"; Grupo Chedraui has its Supercitos and in the plans of FEMSA its format of hard discount called Tiendas Bara.


In 2025, Fomento Económico Mexicano (FEMSA) opened 157 Bara stores, to finish with 636. To its CEO, Jose Antonio Fernandez Garza, in his opinion, its hard discount chain has a stronger long-term value proposition than its competitors, including Tiendas 3B.


"It needs to expand its offer of private labels. But I like our chances of competing with the discount market. This sector will grow dramatically in Mexico over the next two decades. And Bara has a great chance to become one of the leaders there. I like what we have, and our value proposition for Bara adapts to the Bajío and Jalisco region, and the stores we are opening in Monterrey are, for me, the perfect combination of what the northerner needs," says Fernández Garza.


Hatoum knows this, recognizes that it is no longer alone, that Tiendas 3B operates a high-growth business model, which has proven to be solid and resilient, with high cash flows and, above all, that it becomes more competitive as it continues to grow: "Every time we get a customer to buy a new product more than they did before, that is a big leap in productivity and sales".


Epilogue

In the end, the map of Mexican retail seems to be a dispute between three ways of understanding the consumer. Walmart perfects scale and technology; Oxxo dominates the territory corner by corner; Tiendas 3B advances with a more austere intuition: in an economy where the income is fair, the price continues to be the most powerful innovation: to sell many things, cheaper and to do it many times.


Rubén Darío once wrote that in certain battles "The weak lost, the bad won". In modern commerce the phrase sounds less moral and more pragmatic: it is not always the biggest or the most sophisticated who win, but those who best understand the mood of the street. Between Walmart, FEMSA, Chedraui, Soriana, Tiendas Neto and Tiendas 3B, the real battle is not fought in speeches, but in the model that best understands the needs of the consumer.


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