Faced with rising competition in Southern Nevada, a homegrown Hispanic grocery chain has ditched its smallest store for a new, and bigger, location nearby.

Mariana’s Supermarkets is opening its new store near the intersection of Flamingo and Pecos roads this summer, the company recently announced on social media.

The location spans about 40,000 square feet, compared with the roughly 25,000-square-foot store that Mariana’s recently closed on Eastern Avenue at Flamingo, about a mile away, said Ruben Anaya, president and CEO of parent company Mariana’s Enterprises.

All told, the new spot will have a larger variety of items and more departments and services, he said last week.

“It will be a more comfortable shopping experience,” Anaya said.

An opening date has not been set, but Anaya said he expects to open the store at 3250 E. Flamingo Road in the next three to four weeks and to have plenty of specials and prizes to celebrate its debut.

Overall, the total cost of the new store’s build-out is around $5.5 million, he said.

Mariana’s is opening in a once-foreclosed shopping center in the eastern Las Vegas Valley whose current landlord set out to upgrade the property and is renaming the plaza after the soon-to-open supermarket.

Moving close

Anaya, whose family owns the Las Vegas-based grocery chain, said the store on Eastern was the smallest in the group and was outdated.

Plus, as Anaya described it, the store was L-shaped, and his family wanted a more traditional box.

With the lease on that store expiring June 30, Mariana’s ownership opted to move to a long-vacant former Food 4 Less location on Flamingo at Pecos.

It’s not far from the old store, said Anaya, who hopes to retain the existing customers from that location and garner others who live near the new space.

The old location closed last month. Once the new store opens, Mariana’s will again have six locations in the valley.

Its newest home is in a retail center long known as Renaissance III. Spanning more than 20 acres, the plaza went into foreclosure in 2018, and New Jersey-based Aspen Real Estate acquired it in 2024.

When Aspen announced its $24.7 million purchase, it said the shopping center was 60 percent vacant. The firm also said that it allocated $7 million for renovations and tenant improvements and that it planned to rebrand the complex.

The plaza is being renamed Mariana’s Marketplace and is around 75 percent leased, Aspen principal Philip Proetto said.

‘You’ve got to be really competitive’

The supermarket industry is a fiercely competitive business with thin profit margins. And in ever-growing Southern Nevada, specialty grocers such as Asian and Hispanic supermarkets have a sizable presence.

Around one-third of Clark County’s 2.4 million residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and multiple grocery chains in the valley cater to the community.

Las Vegas-based La Bonita Supermarkets has eight locations locally. It held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in January for its newest store, at the corner of Bonanza Road and Nellis Boulevard in east Las Vegas.

The store is more than 50,000 square feet, records show, and city officials said it is La Bonita’s biggest supermarket yet.

Cardenas Markets — part of the California-based Heritage Grocers Group owned by investment giant Apollo Global Management — has six locations in the valley. Last fall, it confirmed that it signed a lease for a new store along Rancho Drive at Lake Mead Boulevard in North Las Vegas.

Plus, California-based El Super, owned by Mexican retail giant Grupo Comercial Chedraui, has four locations in the Las Vegas area. El Super’s footprint includes a store it opened in 2023 at the corner of Tropicana and Eastern avenues, about a mile from the location that Mariana’s recently closed.

Mariana’s — founded by Ruben Anaya’s parents, Hipolito and Ana Maria Anaya — was launched in 1989 as a tortilla factory and opened its first full-scale grocery store in 2002, the chief executive said.

Ruben Anaya knows full well that the Hispanic grocery business is much more competitive in Las Vegas now than it was some 25 years ago, when Southern Nevada’s total population was also smaller.

He said this was one reason that Mariana’s chose a bigger location where it can offer more, and newer, features.

“You’ve got to be really competitive to keep people coming in,” he said.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.