What: Central Retail plans to open up to 37 new food stores in Vietnam by 2028, expanding its Go!, Tops Market, Mini Go! and Lan Chi Mart formats across major and secondary cities.

Why it is important: The upsized target signals Vietnam has moved from opportunistic growth market to a core pillar of Central Retail's strategy, with food formats now the group's clearest profit driver.

Central Retail is expanding its footprint in Vietnam, planning to open up to 37 new food stores by 2028 as consumer spending and demand for modern retail continue to grow. The Thai retailer has invested more than THB49 billion (US$1.5 billion) in Vietnam since entering the market nearly 15 years ago, and now operates more than 300 stores and shopping centres across 26 provinces, covering 1.3 million sqm of retail space.

The company plans to add 10-12 Go! hypermarkets and 23-25 Mini Go! supermarkets over the next two years, targeting both major and secondary cities. Food remains the retailer's main growth driver, with Go!, Tops Market, Mini Go! and Lan Chi Mart comprising its portfolio; Go! stores are being repositioned around fresh food, with bakery and eatery concepts also being introduced.

Central Retail is also expanding its loyalty programme, The 1 Vietnam, which has attracted more than 7.4 million members since launching less than a year ago. More than 90 per cent of products sold in its Vietnamese stores are locally sourced, and the retailer works with more than 2,000 domestic suppliers.

IADS Notes: Central Retail's plan to open up to 37 new food stores in Vietnam by 2028 marks a step-up from the 30-store target it laid out in March 2026 for 2029, a plan already framed at the time as a bet on Vietnam's growth and urbanisation (Inside Retail, March 2026). That confidence has since been reinforced by Vietnam's tourism-driven retail sales surge into double digits and the country's 8%-plus GDP growth in 2025 (Inside Retail, April 2026). The Vietnam push also sits within a broader group-wide pivot: Central Retail's H1 2026 results showed food climbing to 46% of company sales as underperforming hardline units were pruned across Thailand and Vietnam (Inside Retail Asia, September 2026), building on a Q2 2026 profit surge attributed to new-store growth and private-label gains (Inside Retail, August 2026). Underpinning it all is a $1.4 billion investment programme through 2027 that has seen the group divest European assets such as La Rinascente to sharpen its Thailand-Vietnam focus (Inside Retail, March 2026).

Central Retail plans up to 37 new stores in Vietnam by 2028