Wal-Mart of big shoulders

CHICAGO

Baggy clothes and Mexican CDs line the aisles. Catfish bait and automobile decorations sit on the shelves. A local restaurant serves up fried chicken near the checkout stands.

After blanketing rural America, Wal-Mart is pushing into big cities with a new strategy: catering to local shoppers — in this case, black and Hispanic customers in a West Side Chicago neighborhood — while making efforts to help other local businesses survive.

A lot is riding on Wal-Mart’s success at this store, which opened in September, both for the struggling neighborhood and the company.

Chicago is the biggest city that Wal-Mart has entered, but it did so only after a long battle over worker pay and benefits and concerns that it would crush local businesses. They are the same issues that have dogged Wal-Mart for years and prevented it from cracking New York City and other markets.

The retail giant has long been criticized by union-backed groups, who say the company pays poverty wages, runs small businesses out of town and pushes employees onto tax-funded public health care. Wal-Mart denies those accusations.

“Wal-Mart has to show that it is willing and committed to forming a true relationship with that [Chicago] community that goes beyond a big retailer that sells socks cheaper than anybody else,” said Steven Silvers, a corporate reputation management analyst with consultant GBSM Inc. in Denver.

Francisco Soto worries whether such a relationship will happen, or whether so many customers will go to Wal-Mart that he will be driven out of business.

Mr. Soto, who owns Midwest Audio, less than a block from Wal-Mart, said that during the holiday shopping season, Wal-Mart sold television-radios for $25 less than he paid for them.

“That’s my bread and butter,” Mr. Soto said. “I don’t know what my future here holds.”

Wal-Mart insists that it can help both businesses and residents in a community where the unemployment rate is in double digits, noting that 15,000 people applied for 400 jobs there.

To prove it wants to be a good neighbor, the store caters to local residents and says it has a plan to help other businesses.

It carries a wide selection of items such as clothing, music and foods favored by blacks and Hispanics, who account for 90 percent of the customers, manager Ed Smith said.

The aisles are wider than in many other stores because people here often shop in large family groups, said Mia Masten, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman in Chicago. Signs for various sections of the store are in both English and Spanish.

The Uncle Remus Saucy Fried Chicken restaurant is another nod to the neighborhood, Ms. Masten said.

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